Reverseworld Stories
by Shwoo
Summary: Adventure Time in the land of Uuu, with Simon the Human and Gunter the Penguin.
1. Mortal Chagrin

This excellent AU is not mine! I just write in it. It was created by Steeldragondown and coffee-elemental. Also read Reverseworld Time with Finn and Jake by Steeldragondown! It's not necessary to understand these stories, though.

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Monster Castle's basement had surprisingly good acoustics. Simon began to incorporate a lot more bass into the rhythm he was playing, as much out of scientific curiosity as a desire to make interesting music.

Marceline stopped singing along with Gunter's keyboard and called "Drum solo!"

"Oh, oh, uh..." Simon fumbled with the drumsticks, and managed something pretty passable.

Marceline was so good. Sometimes Simon was proud of what he could do with the drums, but he wasn't nearly as good as Marceline and her singing. Of course, he was a bit younger than her. He wasn't sure by how much, but she was definitely older than she seemed. That was the thing with vampires. They stopped aging when they were bitten. Marceline was going to be in her late teens until the day she died.

He dropped down to a simpler snare rhythm, and said "Thanks for inviting us to jam with you, Marceline."

"No problem," replied Marceline. She strummed a few chords on her bass. "Sometimes it's just nice to zone out and play, you know?"

Simon had not been zoning out, but he didn't want to admit it. "Uh, yeah!" He tried some syncopation, tried to keep it going without concentrating, missed a beat, and winced. He wasn't ready for the zone-out level of musical accomplishment just yet.

Marceline began to sing again, but quickly stopped. "Uh-oh. While I was zoning out just now, I had... a vision."

"Wow!" said Simon and Gunter in unison.

A number of questions came to Simon about the kind of vision, which sense was most prominent, whether the Cosmic Owl was present, and whether she'd got a vision because she was a vampire, because of her demon blood, or from something else entirely. Before he could figure out how to ask them without being called a dork, Marceline said "Sorry guys. I gotta go check on something."

"Ooh!" said Gunter, turning his keyboard off and leaning over in interest. "What is it? Is it your new bass player? I told you you should have let her take her metamorphasis leave."

"Is it about... your vision?" said Simon. He wished he got visions more often. He only ever got them from outside influences. And then he usually had to bash the outside influences with nunchucks because they were evil. It sucked.

Maybe that was where Marceline had got the visions? From something evil he needed to bash with nunchucks?

Marceline hesitated, then said "Tell you what. How about you two come with me? You were probably just gonna follow me anyway."

"Yeah, we probably were," said Gunter, putting his instrument away in its case.

"Don't tell her that!" said Simon. He was right, though. He was getting pretty good at keeping out of sight. "We'd love to go with you to check on your vision, Marceline!"

"Okay, just..." Marceline floated over to one of the cardboard boxes lining the walls, and began tossing things out. "Ugh, where is it? Aha!" She pulled out a couple of circlets and tossed them to Simon and Gunter. "Put these on. They'll protect you from mind control."

Simon did so. "Cool!" What could they possibly be going to check on that required this much preparation? It sounded like an adventure in the making.

Gunter tilted his head. "Simon. Tell me the truth. Does this thing make me look girly?"

"Aren't you a girl?" said Simon. He could never tell.

Gunter shrugged.

.

The three of them took a submersible under the biggest tar lake in the Monster Kingdom. "Now, maybe you've heard of this guy," Marceline began.

"It's Peppermint Butler!" said Gunter immediately.

"Bonnibel's creepy manservant?" said Marceline. "No! It's-"

"Donny?" said Gunter. "Muscle Princess? Tree Trunks?"

"Gunter, why would Tree Trunks be hanging out in a tar lake in the Monster Kingdom?" said Marceline. "There aren't even any apples down here."

Gunter shrugged, and started to suggest something else.

Simon grabbed Gunter's beak and held it closed. "Gunter, quit messing around." He was getting really curious, and Gunter would keep talking all day if he got a chance.

"No, the guy we're checking on is way more dangerous and evil than Tree Trunks," said Marceline, curling her hands into claws for emphasis. "He had a lair out past Iceberg Lake, where he tried to suck up all the planet's life!" She hissed.

Simon gasped. He had heard of that guy. "The Lich! It's here?" He peered into the tar, but all he could see was blackness.

"The what?" said Gunter, inappropriately unconcerned.

"The Lich!" repeated Simon. He couldn't believe Gunter had never heard of it. It was kind of the greatest evil in Uuu. "Some say it always existed. Some say it was created as a byproduct of the Great Mushroom War. But everyone agrees on one thing. It is a killer! All it cares about is destroying all life in Uuu - in the world!" He checked that the circlet was still on his head. Now he understood why Marceline had given them to them. "It's like, mad dangerous!" he finished.

"What does he look like?" said Gunter, still with much less gravitas than the situation demanded. He pressed his flippers against the front window. "I bet he's just made of muscles, like, his entire body is one big pec, and with just one arm he could lift an entire battilion of-"

"Gunter, this is serious!" said Simon. He thought he could whispering now. He wasn't a coward. At least, he thought he wasn't. But his mind was the second-best weapon he had, and the Lich was not taking it away from him.

A horned skeleton with flesh still clinging to his bones appeared out of the murk, and Simon jerked back. He'd the Lich before, in books, but it didn't measure up to the real thing. It was so big. Despite being completely still, it seemed to stare right at him.

Marceline breathed a sigh of relief. "Good, he's still here," she said. "I was really worried for a second there. He's encased in the toughest, stickiest tar in the kingdom, and we all have protection from his mind control, so it's-"

Abruptly the submersible pitched forwards, right into the Lich.

"What-" began Simon. He checked his circlet again.

Gunter pointed. "Look! The controls!"

Simon looked. "The waving snail! It must have come in with us!" He lunged for the snail, but it was too late. The Lich became a black mist and flowed through the diving bell, on its way to the surface.

Marceline put her face in her hands and groaned. "Great. I guess I shouldn't ask you two to do something about the Lich, but-"

"Are you implying that we couldn't stand up to pastyskull up there?" said Gunter, indicating the empty mass of tar in front of them. "Come on, we're heroes!"

"Yeah!" Simon agreed. "We'll stop the Lich, or die trying!" And they weren't going to die. Even against the Lich. He hoped.

"Those are your only two options," said Marceline, which didn't make Simon feel any more confident. "Come on. I'll show you where we keep the secret weapon."

That sounded good.

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The secret weapon turned out to be the gauntlet of the legendary Billy, the hero who'd defeated the Lich in the first place.

"You mean to say that Billy defeated both the Lich King and the Lich?" said Gunter, as Simon tried out the gauntlet. "He's just so... He's amazing, that's what he is."

Marceline made kissy noises, and Simon laughed.

Gunter blushed, and said "Oh, come on. It's just a little... little penguin crush." He twiddled his flippers.

Billy was pretty great, Simon had to admit. But he hadn't defeated two liches. Just the one. "The Lich is the Lich King," he explained, glancing at Marceline, who was looking through her pack. "Remember that interdimensional exchange from last decade?" The delegates made a pretty good argument for why their Lich King was much more of a King than Uuu's Lich King. Simon didn't understand why there was only one being in the multiverse who could be called that, but the committee had apparently been on the delegates' side.

"Oh, you mean when you were still wearing nappies?" said Gunter.

"They were not nappies!" He'd only had to wear them at night. He'd had a bed wetting problem. But he wasn't about to admit that in front of Marceline.

"Simon," said Marceline suddenly. "I, uh, wanted you to have this. It's... It's kind of chilly in the Lich's lair. You know."

Simon, who was still thinking about the Lich King, started to say that it wasn't like it was like it was in the Ice Kingdom. Then he saw what he was offering him. It was a sweater, red with a black collar. It felt kind of scratchy. "Marceline, did you... make this?" Marceline was not much of a knitter.

Marceline looked away and said "Just take it, okay? Be glad I didn't stitch spider fangs into the inside."

Simon was pretty glad for that. He pulled it on. "Thanks a lot, Marcy! Are you gonna come with?"

Marceline sighed. "I wish I could, but... I better stay here and reassure my subjects that the Lich is not going to blow up the planet again."

Simon opened the door. "Okay, we better hurry- again?"

"Never mind," said Marceline. "Just... come back safe, okay?" She leaned down and kissed Simon on the cheek.

"Oi, where's my kiss?" said Gunter. Simon pushed him out the door.

.

"All I'm saying is-" Gunter gasped for air as they ran towards Iceberg Lake. "All I'm saying is- You don't even like like Marceline. She- She's like your big sister. Except a vampire!"

"What do you mean, like like?" said Simon, who was much more concerned about catching up to the Lich than whatever Gunter was complaining about.

"You know, _like_ like" said Gunter. He waggled his flippers around. "Like like like."

Simon was beginning to get the picture. "Gunter..."

"Like like like lik- Oof!" Gunter bumped into someone big and blue.

"Finn-Ice?" said Simon. He put his hand to the pocket where he kept his nunchucks, glad to get off the topic of like liking Marceline. He'd never thought about that before, and it made his skin crawl.

Prince Finn-Ice picked himself up and said "Hey! Watch where you're going!"

Gunter shook his flipper. "Oh yeah? Why don't you watch where you're going? And also take a bath!"

Finn-Ice stared at them blankly and stroked his beard. "Man, what was I going to say to you two? Uh..."

Simon kept his hand on his nunchucks, but he said "Look, we don't have time for this. We have to stop the Lich. Do even know what the Lich is?" He doubted it. For a wizard, Finn-Ice was pretty dumb.

"Well... maybe I don't have time for you!" Finn-Ice yelled, and flew into the sky.

Gunter looked up after him. "Weird. Wonder what he wanted."

"Who cares?" said Simon. "Come on, we have to go after the Lich!"

Gunter started running again, but he said "Ugh, I am exhausted. Tell you what, we'll camp here, and we can go after the Lich King in the morning."

Simon slapped him. "No! Come on!" What would it take for Gunter to understand that this wasn't a game? This wasn't some lowly skeleton monster. The Lich would kill everyone on Earth if they let it.

"All right, all right," said Gunter.

They sped up.

.

Marceline strummed her guitar, sighing. As usual, she'd just made things worse. Not in setting the Lich free. Self-fulfilling prophecies were tricky, and she'd long ago stopped beating herself up when she got caught up in one.

No, it was the royal speech that she'd skronked up. She guessed she probably shouldn't have listed all the ways that the Lich wasn't going to destroy the world - fire, flood, explosion, putting the planet in a bag of holding and throwing it into the sun... - or at least, she shouldn't have gone into detail. But how else were they supposed to know what they didn't have to worry about?

Simon and Gunter would be fine. They were always fine. Even against an incarnation of pure destruction that had terrorised the world for centuries and taken a true hero to-

"Maybe I better go after them," she said aloud. "It's not like I'm doing any good here." She floated out of her castle, over the Monster Kingdom, which was a lot brighter than usual with all the arson and rioting going on, and towards Iceberg Lake. After a second's thought, she touched down and shifted to wolf form. That was faster. She didn't know why she didn't do this more often.

She located the very distinct scent of penguin, and followed it through the grasslands. She was making good time. A few more minutes and she'd catch-

A bolt of ice hit her from above, freezing her back legs.

Oh. That was why she didn't use this form much.

Finn-Ice came down from the sky. "You're a big puppy, aren't you?"

Marceline tried to free her back legs, but they were so cold she could barely move them. And if she couldn't move her legs, she couldn't shift back. "I'm not a puppy, you psycho, I'm a wolf! And I'm not a wolf, I'm a vampire!" What was he, blind? She didn't even look like a real wolf.

"A talking puppy?" said Finn-Ice, squinting at her. "That... That's totally _math_!" He seemed to come to a decision. "Come on, puppy! This will show Simon and Gunter! I don't need their approval! The approval was in me the whole time!" He tapped his chest.

"What?" said Marceline.

Finn-Ice picked her up and headed for the lake, where Gunter was swimming after the Lich, with Simon riding on his back. Simon was using Billy's gauntlet as a motorboat engine, but it didn't look like he could get a clear shot yet.

"Hey!" called Finn-Ice. "Hey, you guys! Look! I caught a dog all on my own!"

They ignored him. Marceline was kind of proud. Finn Ice was not the issue now. The Lich was the issue. She'd made the right decision in entrusting the safety of all life on Earth to these two. Probably. Responsibility wasn't her strong suit. It was easily the most boring part of being a queen.

The moment that Simon got in range of the Lich was the was the exact moment Finn-Ice chose to drop down and hover right in front of them. "Pay attention to me, guys! Would you just look at this dog!"

Simon lowered the gauntlet. "Marceline?"

"Look at this _dog_!" Finn-Ice exploded, and pitched Marceline into the water. "Oops. Just... Just stay there, puppy..."

"Marceline!" said Simon. He leaned over the side. "Stay still, I'll blast you loose with the gauntlet."

"N-" Marceline went under for a second. The ice on her back legs floated so well that it was hard to keep her head above the surface. "No!" she repeated, spitting out water. "The Lich, Simon! Stop the Lich!"

"Oh!" Simon glanced ahead. "He's nearly there! Gunter, hurry up!"

"I'm trying!" said Gunter.

Simon put the gauntlet back in the water, and they sped away.

Marceline was almost glad when Finn-Ice picked her up again. The boys needed to focus on stopping the Lich, not whatever trouble she'd got herself into. She'd be fine as soon as she got rid of the ice. For now, she amused herself with fantasies of what she'd do to that weirdo when he let her go.

.

"It went down there!" said Simon, pointing at what looked the entrance to an old... what was it called? A subway, that was it.

"I know, I saw it!" said Gunter. He slid down the stairs, with Simon following close behind.

The subway was quiet. It looked like nobody had been there in years, maybe centuries. There was definitely no Lich. It was pretty hard to miss.

"You know, out of all the scary holes we've been in, this is definitely the second or third most... ancient," whispered Gunter. He tapped a subway car lightly, and it crumbled. "I... I meant to do that."

Simon found it more or less like any other creepy hole of indescribable evil. "Holes are holes," he whispered back.

"What's that me- uh-oh."

The ground began to rumble, and a group of skeletons in pre-Mushroom war garb pulled themselves out of the dirt.

"Hey skeletons, did you see where-" Simon began, and jumped out of the way as the skeleton swung at him. "I guess they have poo brain."

"Low level mooks always have poo brain," said Gunter, who had one clone of himself holding a skeleton down while two others pummeled it. "I've always wondered about that."

"Well - eat gauntlet!" Simon fired at the skeletons, with very satisfying results.

They rushed down a few more levels of the subway, to a hole in the ground that emanated disturbing whispers. where the Lich was drinking from a well of green, glowing liquid.

Simon gasped. Green and glowing was the universal symbol of radioactivity! It must have been left over from the Great Mushroom War. "Gunter, I think the Lich needs radioactive liquid to survive! Do you think it was created by the Mushroom War? Is that why it wasn't mentioned in the historical record before then?" Historical records from the centuries after the war were patchy, but the Lich appeared in them again and again.

"I dunno," said Gunter.

The Lich looked up, and Simon remembered where they were. "Eat gauntlet also, Lich!" He fired a beam of energy, which the Lich dodged.

"He's too fast!" said Simon. "I need to get in closer!"

Gunter grew to a huge size. "Whatever you say!" He grabbed Simon and flung him down at the Lich.

"Hey Lich, I got som-"

The Lich grabbed the gauntlet. The gauntlet shattered.

Before Simon could process what had happened, the ground rushed up at him and he landed on his face and slid into a wall.

The whispering got louder.

Simon felt his head. There were no lumps, but something was missing. He glanced around, and saw the mind protecting circlet, half buried in the dirt three feet away. "No!"

"Simon..."

Simon looked at the Lich. He couldn't look away. He could barely turn his head at all. He thought he could hear Gunter saying something, and... was that Marceline? When did she get there?

"Simon, walk into the well..."

Simon tried to stop himself from walking forwards, without much success. The vibrant green of the Lich's well did look kind of inviting. It looked very inviting, compared to the vague blackness of the rest of reality. He could barely make out anything other than the Lich, and that inviting green well.

"Simon... Come here, Simon... Aren't you cold, Simon?"

He was... He felt... He did not feel cold. "I'm wearing a sweater!" Simon blurted. He pulled at it. Somehow, just thinking about the sweater cleared his head.

He didn't get much chance to enjoy his lucidity, because the Lich snarled "You are a joke to me!" and blasted him with radioactive green fire.

Simon screamed, until he noticed he wasn't being burned alive. In fact it didn't hurt at all. He looked down. Was it the sweater...? The sweater Marceline had made him? Maybe... Yes, that was it! He got it now!

He pulled off the sweater, rolled it into a tube, and jumped at the Lich. "Lich! Queen Marceline made me this sweater! Gunter was right, I do think of her as a big sister! And she thinks of me as a little brother!" He hoped. "That's why she made me this sweater! This sweater is imbued with the power of... the power of caring for someone intensely in a familial sort of way! That's what is going to defeat you, Lich!" As he spoke, he whipped the Lich with the sweater, making it stumble into a wall. "While you were trying to mind control me, I thought I heard Marceline's voice! That's what this sweater does! It reminds you of your loved ones!"

He whipped one more time, as hard as he could, and the Lich's head cracked and imploded. The Lich's lair came back into focus, and Simon jumped down.

"That was a really corny speech, you know," said Marceline.

Simon dropped the sweater and whirled around. "Marceline?!"

Finn-Ice was holding Marceline above the well of radioactive goop. She was still in her wolf form, and still trapped in ice.

"You heard me because I was right here, you dork," Marceline added, but she was smiling.

"I tried to tell you, but you were off in your own little world," said Gunter, waving a flipper.

Simon felt his cheeks grow hot. He was never going to live this down, ever.

But at least he'd have a chance to try, because he'd defeated the Lich, and life would go on. He'd actually managed to defeat the most evil and terrible being in Uuu. The worst was over. "Finn-Ice, let her go!" he said. "She's not even a dog!"

Finn Ice turned to look at Marceline, and wrinkled his forehead. "Then why does she look like a dog, nerd-boy?" he demanded, releasing Marceline and waving his hands around.

Marceline dropped right into the well. The ice burned off, and she reverted back to her humanoid form as she vanished beneath the surface.

Finn Ice looked at Simon and Gunter, then at the well, then at Simon and Gunter again. "Uh... Oops?"


	2. Bonnie & Betty

The Sea of Something unfolded beneath Bonnibel and Lady as they flew eastwards, following the glowing streamers that marked the ocean currents.

Lady pointed ahead. "There! They all lead to that beach!"

She was right, but Bonnibel couldn't see the exact point of convergence. They were lost in the turmoil a few hundred feet off shore. "We better take a closer look."

The beach they landed on wasn't much more than a thin strip of coarse, frost-covered sand between the rocks and the water. If Bonnibel had her geography right, they were right on the outskirts of the Ice Kingdom.

Lady dipped a foot in the water, and quickly pulled it out. "Brrrr!" She rubbed her feet together. "I don't know how I expected it to feel."

"I'm sure this is the origin of the anomalies," said Bonnibel, using a thermometer to measure the water temperature. "Hm. Normally this water would be flowing west to cool the Monster Kingdom. This must be it's been so hot lately!"

Just as she'd thought. It was a good thing too. It had taken hours to put all that light in the water.

Lady scanned the empty beach. "What do you think it is?"

Bonnibel did the same. "I don't know yet. With Simon and Gunter missing, I suspect foul play."

"Oh, they're missing?" said Lady worriedly. "I didn't know that."

Bonnibel picked a chunk of ice off the ground and inspected it. "They were last heard from a week ago. Finn Ice was keeping half the grasslands awake with his fresh jams, so Simon and Gunter chased him to the Ice Kingdom. And then, all three of them vanished." She dropped the ice and rummaged through her pack for her radar.

"Finn Ice!" Lady repeated. She gestured at the icy landscape. "Could he be behind this?"

Bonnibel shook her head. "He's terrified of the ocean, Lady. I think we can rule him out. For once." Something on the radar caught her eye. "A cave!"

She and Lady ran up the beach to a collection of small boulders. According to the radar, there was a deep cave right below their feet.

Bonnibel produced a crowbar and began clearing away the rocks. "Feel like going spelunking?"

Lady gulped, but she said "Let's go."

.

"You know, I think I'm finally getting the hang of it."

Simon groaned. "Go suck on a... cheese ball..." he whispered. He wanted to yell, but he was too weak to raise his voice.

"What did you say? I didn't catch that." The sound of footsteps approached.

Simon grit his teeth. "I said-" Pain exploded in his chest, and he screamed.

"Don't be such a baby. It's just one rib."

"Ri... cardio..." Simon muttered. He'd never hated a part of his body as much as he hated his heart right now. Simon might not be as much of a hero as he tried to be, but he would never put somebody on biomagical life support and steal their organs to build himself a better body.

Would he?

Ricardio was a part of him.

Didn't that make them, at some level, the same?

Simon's rib began to grow back, and his attention returned to the gaping hole in his chest.

"Something tells me you don't want to be here, Simon," Ricardio was saying. "You know you can leave at any time."

Simon forced himself to look up, and said "You are a complete _butt_."

Ricardio had given him back his sword days ago, but even with his mind clouded from the pain, Simon knew he couldn't cut himself lose. The arteries that bound him to the floor were also the only thing keeping him alive, as well as the only reason his organs regenerated when Ricardio took them. Simon didn't think his heart wanted him dead yet, but only because it would be inconvenient. Maybe if he tried to escape, Ricardio would just reattach him and take parts from his corpse.

He held onto the sword, though. Maybe he could only cut some of the arteries. He didn't need them all to stay alive. Right? He could function on only a little blood. If he just cut all the ones on his right side, maybe he could stretch the left ones far enough get to the pool of water Ricardo had his stolen hands in.

"Yes, I think it's time..." said Ricardio to himself.

"Time for... Time for what?" Simon mumbled, though he thought he knew. There was only one thing in the ocean important enough for his heart to risk insanity.

.

The cave started out as a narrow tunnel, but it soon widened into a chamber large enough to stand up in. Up ahead, three tunnels tunnels snaked off into the ground. They seemed to be coated in something shiny and red. Mucus membrane? No, that was silly. Bonnibel had been dissecting too many bodies.

Bonnibel inspected her heart monitor, which was the only locating device that seemed to work down here. "Hmm... There's three hearts over that way. No, wait! Eight."

"Eight?" said Lady, peering at the heart monitor. "Are you sure?"

Bonnibel selected the fastest heart rate and zoomed in a bit. "Look. This one has five heartbeats close by, and they're going even faster." She needed to add a function that displayed the exact beats per minute. It was hard to judge by eye at speeds like these.

"Parasites?" Lady suggested.

"I don't think so," said Bonnibel. She bit her lip. "Listen. The other two heartbeats are at a rate consistent with humanoids." She pointed at the cluster of heartbeats. "Hearts this fast are usually found in small animals. I think we found the boys, and Finn Ice. And I think Gunter might be- Look out!"

A tentacle whipped towards them, and Bonnibel dived out of the way just in time.

It hit Lady right in the belly.

"Lady!" Bonnibel reached into her backpack and drew her Ball Blam Burglerber.

.

Ricardio checked on his old host before he did anything else. Simon had passed out again, but he seemed to be breathing. Good. As enjoyable as it was to taunt him, he would have to stop him if he really tried to cut his way free. Ricardio hadn't yet perfected his new body, and even if there had been any other humans around, there was no guarantee that their organs would be a proper match.

All his body really, really needed was a head large enough to wear a crown. But Ricardio was a big believer in form over function. His girls would be arriving soon, and he had to look his best.

In fact, it was just about time for his first guest. Ricardio took Finn Ice's crown from where he'd dropped it, and placed it back on his body's head.

He could wear the crown without ill effects because, as Simon had theorised, it only drove non-magical creatures insane. That was why nothing had happened to Gunter. Ricardio had taken a huge gamble in assuming that Simon was correct, but some things were worth it for love.

Afterwards, he'd thanked Simon profously, but Simon hadn't responded. He'd probably accidentally crushed a fly or something. By Ricardio's calculations, the accidental death of an insect corresponded to at least three solid hours of self-flaggellation. No wonder Simon had ended up this way.

He dipped his hands in the water. This pool was connected to the open sea, and as long as he was touching it, he could influence the temperature of the ocean anywhere within about a ten mile radius. Water got denser as it got colder, and changes in density drove ocean currents.

Well, that and wind, but he couldn't do much about that from here. Maybe later.

Ricardio concentrated. A few months ago, he'd found that he could influence Simon's interests. As a result, Simon had gained a sudden fascination with the terrain of the ocean floor all around Uuu. He'd made some very detailed maps, without ever suspecting a thing.

He conjured up an image of those maps in his mind, and cooled the water at three very specific locations.

There was a loud wooshing, and then a splash.

Ricardio took enough of a look to confirm that he'd caught the fish he was aiming for, and blasted ice at the pile of boulders he'd balanced just above the pool. They fell, sealing off the crack at the bottom of the pool that led outside.

He threw off the crown and jumped into the water. Ricardio had deliberately designed this body without lungs, so that he could interact with either of his future wives without trouble.

The most beautiful and enchanting princess in the ocean or out of it was cradling her head, clearly a bit dazed.

Ricardio swam over to her. "I'm sorry, my sweet. Did I hurt you?"

Betty focused on him, then looked over her shoulder. "Are you talking to me? Are you- Did you pull me in here?"

Ricardio put a hand on her arm, and grabbed her wrist when she pulled away. "Yes, of course. Beautiful."

"What?!" Betty managed to break out of his grip - Ricardio needed to increase his muscle mass - and swam for the exit.

She was so sassy. Ricardio loved that about her. Up to a point.

He stayed where he was. There was nowhere for her to go.

Betty came back a few seconds later. "There's no way out of here. What did you do? What do you want?" She seemed perfectly calm now, which Ricardio took as a good sign.

Ricardio kissed her dainty webbed hand. "Not much. Just your hand in marriage."

Betty didn't swim away or jerk back this time. She just looked at him strangely. "I don't even know you. I'm not gonna marry someone I don't even know. Who are you?"

"Are you sure you don't know me, princess?" said Ricardio. He pulled her into a one-handed embrace, which she immediately slipped out of, and pointed upwards. "Take a look up there."

Betty took a deep breath and poked her head above the water. There was a short gasp, and she came back under, coughing up bubbles.

"What did you do to-" She coughed again. "What did you do to Simon?" A small whirlpool began to form in the centre of the pool.

"Forget about him," said Ricardio soothingly. "You're with me now. The best part of Simon." Much better than that overactive brain. He was seriously considering removing Simon's amygdala permanently.

"The best part...? What does..." The look on Betty's face told Ricardio that she'd just got it. "What have you done to yourself this time, Simon?" she said quietly.

"What does it matter?" So Simon hadn't told Betty about him. Good. He didn't want Betty's opinion tained by Simon's misguidedness.

Betty flipped onto her back and swam into the shallows. The whirlpool subsided. "Okay, listen. I'm flattered that Simon likes me so much that his heart would... try to kidnap me, but it's not going to work out between us. Unblock the tunnel and... fix Simon, and we'll pretend this never happened."

"Simon?" said Ricardio with a laugh. "He can't even breathe underwater. Why would I want to, uh, "fix" him?"

He'd expected something like this. Betty didn't yet understand Ricardio's superiority, or how beyond fixing Simon was. Simon could barely even stay awake for more than two minutes at a time. His "hero" days were over. He should have been grateful Ricardio was even keeping him alive for spare parts, but of course he wasn't. That boy had no sense of priorities.

"So, you say you can do anything Simon can do?" said Betty. She still didn't seem angry. This was going to be easy.

"Yes, and more." Ricardio took her hand and kissed it.

Betty pulled her hand away gently. "Can you... solve this differential equation?"

She produced an underwater notebook, wrote something, and handed it over.

Ricardio stared at the equation with his hand on the chin of his head. It didn't look easy, but it was definitely something that Simon was capable of. And that meant that Ricardio could do it too. "I can. May I borrow your pen?"

Betty gave it to him, and he scribbled furiously for a few minutes. Eventually he figured it out and held up the answer, breathing hard. Mathematics was invigorating!

Betty took the notebook and inspected it carefully. She hadn't warmed up enough to him to tell him if he was right or not, but he could see it on her face. He'd solved it perfectly. Just like Simon would have. No, better than Simon.

"You see?" he said.

Apparently Betty needed a bit more convincing, because she said "And if a hybernotalist rift forms inside another hybernotalist rift, how does that affect the arrangement of the spiral nano-babylons?"

Ricardio laughed. Now she was asking trivia questions? He had this. He'd nearly captured her heart. And the rest of her. "They would form a g-dimensional hypotetrabubaflo, resulting in the complete collapse of the plasmid ecosystem, of course."

"One more question," said Betty. She swam up to him, and Ricardio smiled. He'd practically won her over already. "Why is it wrong to kidnap people?"

Ricardio frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't think I follow." What was this? Philosophy? He didn't know she was into philosophy.

Betty got very close, and Ricardio beat hard. "Why. Is. Kidnapping. Wrong?"

Ah. It was a trick question. "Right... wrong... Who makes these concepts? Philosophers? Don't slow yourself down with the soft sciences. Or you'll end up like him." He waved his hand in the general direction of Simon.

He smiled. She'd probably never thought of it that way before! He'd even managed to include another dig at Simon's inadequacy. He was on fire today.

Maybe it was because she was a mermaid, but Ricardio couldn't quite identify Betty's reaction. She was frowning and her eyes were narrowed. She looked almost... contemptuous. "Simon is a ka_million_ times better than you."

Hm. Maybe she wasn't as smart as he'd thought. That was disappointing. "That's not very scientific, my dear."

Betty opened her mouth, and there was a beep from the manly, muscular pager on one of Ricardio's manly, muscular wrists.

"Oh my. And so far ahead of schedule." Someone else had arrived in the inner sanctum. Someone made of sugar, butadiene, and artificial flavourings. "I'm sorry princess, but I have another... haha, engagement."

Betty spat salt at him, and Ricardio wiped it off with one of his backup livers. She'd come around. He was glad for the respite, to tell the truth. He needed to think of a better approach.

Bonnibel would be easy. He'd charmed her before, and he could do it again. And then she could help him crack the princess.

.

The crown rolled to a stop at Simon's shoulder, but Simon barely noticed. One look at Ricardio's delighted face before he'd dived in was all he needed to convince himself that he'd trapped Betty.

No matter how he craned his neck, he couldn't tell what was going on in the pool. Was Ricardio trying to cut out her heart too? Or had he been telling the truth when he'd said he wanted the "whole package"? Simon didn't know if the crown's effects had really been blocked by Ricardio's inherent magic, or if it just couldn't make him any crazier than he already was.

The crown...

Simon reached over painfully and managed to grab one of its points. Maybe he could... He had to save Betty. He had to save her! It was his fault she was trapped like this. Ricardio was only in love with her because Simon was. He had to make it right.

Even if it meant... Even if it meant losing himself. It was the price he paid for getting her into this.

He managed to grab hold of the crown with both hands, but he couldn't bring himself to put it on. What if he became even more dangerous than Ricardio? What could he even do without a heart? Magic almost always got weaker as the caster did.

What if he made Betty hate him? To his knowledge, Finn Ice had been a pretty okay guy until he'd got the crown, and now he was... Well, he was Finn Ice.

Someone kicked him in the side. "Oof!"

"Simon?" It was Bonnibel. "Is that you?" She looked down and shrieked.

"Hey," said Simon weakly. He was well aware of how he must look. He'd shriek at himself too. Maybe. If he thought Gunter wouldn't make fun of him for it. For very long.

He held onto the crown. Maybe Bonnibel could succeed where he'd failed, but Ricardio was in love with her as well. As long as he was free, she was in danger. Simon should have realised something like this would happen. He should have done more to get over his crush on her. There were so many things he should have done

"Bonnibel! What a pleasant surprise."

Bonnibel peered into the darkness. "Ricardio...?"

Ricardio stepped into the light, revealing the body he'd built. "Yes, it is I."

Simon rolled his eyes, and winced as pain shot through the front of his skull. Ricardio had spent nearly a full day setting up the lighting that made that entrance possible.

"I must say, I'm impressed that you found me so quickly. What gave it away? Psycho-magical residue, perhaps? Did one of those taffy dogs sniff us out?"

"Where's Gunter?" Bonnibel demanded. She hesitated. "And... And Finn-Ice?"

"Don't worry, they're safe," said Ricardio, incorrectly. "See?" He leaned down and hefted Gunter and Finn Ice over like sacks of potatoes.

Bonnibel held Gunter's flipper. "Poisoned with zanoits..." she mumbled. "I can't believe even you would do this to- Simon, is that Finn Ice's crown?"

Simon dropped the crown. Under her glare, wearing the crown didn't seem so heroic and redeeming.

"You didn't put it on, did you?" said Bonnibel, checking his forehead.

Simon shook his head, which didn't help his headache, and managed to say "I'm so sorry! I couldn't stop him. I'm sorry!"

"It's okay-" Bonnibel began.

"Oh Bonnibel!" called Ricardio. "Look what I can do now!" He picked something long and thick up from the floor - It was Lady Rainicorn! She was singed and seemed to be unconscious. "Behold!" Ricardio held Lady above his head and tied her in a knot.

Bonnibel gasped. So did Simon.

"What is wrong with you?" demanded Bonnibel, still with a hand on Simon's forehead.

Ricardio got up close to her and said "Now now, what kind of a tone is that to take towards your future husband?"

Simon tried to focus through the fuzziness in his brain. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" No, there was something else he could say. He was sure. Something he could say that would outwit Ricardio and make everything right. "I'm sorry, Bonnie..."

"Silence, Simon!" said Ricardio, and stamped on his face.

.

Betty searched floor to surface for a way out of the pool, but that heart guy had done a good job sealing it. With the room almost entirely flooded with air, the only was she was getting out was if she learned to hold her breath.

What did he expect her to do? Sit here for the rest of her life, completely isolated from the ocean?

Someone plunged their head into the water, and Betty turned towards them with a scowl.

To her surprise, it wasn't heart guy this time. It was just her second least favourite person in the world. "Bonnibel." Her scowl deepened.

"Wait!" said Bonnibel, like Betty had anywhere to go. "Just hear me out!" She turned her head to the side, turned back, and continued. "I understand why you don't want to talk to me, but I think I know how to stop Ricardio."

Ricardio? What was that, the heart guy's name? Why would a heart need a name? Surface people were weird. Betty folded her arms and waited for Bonnibel to continue.

"All you have to do is reject him," Bonnibel said. "He's really sensitive to that. The hard part is getting him to believe you. You may have to use violence."

"You want me to break Simon's heart?" said Betty. She was on to Bonnibel. Ricardio was a creep, and she did want to violently reject him, but if the price was ruining her relationship with the only boy who'd ever liked her, it was too high.

Bonnibel looked genuinely confused. "What? They're separate beings now. Simon is never gonna feel what Ricardio does. I'd do it myself, but it would work much better with you. I think he likes you as much as Simon does! Please, Betty, it'll be fine. I told you, I won't interfere in your relationships anymore."

Betty doubted it, but there were more important things on the line than Bonnibel's scheming. As far as she could see, there were two choices. She could risk having to break up with her boyfriend, or she could stay in this cave forever with an eviscerated boyfriend that she could never touch or speak to. And his wad of a heart.

"Fine. Tell him... Tell him I want to fight him in oceanic wrestling." Betty had an idea. Mostly her idea was about beating up Ricardio.

Bonnibel smiled and made a circle with her finger and thumb.

Betty rotated onto her back and looked beyond the surface. She could just see Bonnibel speaking to a very smug-looking Ricardio. Bonnibel offered him some valuable-looking crown, but Ricardio shook his head and knocked it away.

When he looked away, Bonnibel smirked.

Ricardio splashed into the water. "Betty, my dear! Bonnibel tells me you came around to my charms after all!" He glanced up at Bonnibel, who was watching them. "Oh, I hope you don't mind sharing."

"Yeah, whatever," said Betty. "I mean..." She put on the formal voice she usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. "Your interest in me is flattery enough, Sir... Heart Guy...?"

"Please, call me Ricardio," said Ricardio. "Bonnibel mentioned a friendly bout...?" He posed, making sure Betty could see every one of his muscles.

Yeah. 'Friendly.' "Are you sure you really want to do this?" said Betty. "I'm pretty good." She didn't actually care about his safety, but she didn't want him to say she hadn't warned him.

"Of course!" said Ricardio. He posed again. "How can I resist such a Valkyrian proposal?"

In response, Betty started a mild current around the pool. It was a pretty standard opener when you didn't know much about your opponent.

Ricardio's response was not standard. He remained stationary by holding onto the wall, and took a swing at her.

Betty used the current to tug his arm away, and frowned. Did he even know what oceanic wrestling was? She assumed he had some way to control the currents, or he wouldn't have been able to trap her like this, so why wasn't he using it?

"Ooh, I'm impressed," said Ricardio, trying to pull his arm forward. Betty increased the flow.

One by one, the sinews on Ricardio's arm began to detach.

How poorly was this body put together? Had he made it himself, or something? It was barely enough pressure to keep his arm pinned. She pulled harder, and the arm flew off and down the length of the pool.

Ricardio clung to the wall, speechless for once.

Betty yanked off his other arm and used a vortex to hold him at eye level. "Do you even know anything about this sport? Do you know anything about the ocean? About me?"

Ricardio opened his mouth, but Betty couldn't really hear him over the whirling of the current. She caught something about love, and making her happy.

"The second rule of oceanic wrestling is to go with the flow, and you didn't even do that!" said Betty. "You think you know all about me, don't you? Simon may not know much about the ocean either, but at least he's trying to learn! You just messed him up and jumped right in here like you already knew everything! I don't know what kind of crazy magic made you, but you're not Simon's heart. You're not even his _butt_."

She pulled off his legs one at a time.

"And by the way, the first rule of oceanic wrestling is not to enter a match with the freaking ocean princess unless you know what you're doing!" Her anger made her more forceful than she intended, but she didn't really care. She'd show Bonnibel who was physically unstable.

Finally, she ripped off his stupid fake head and tossed him onto land with a water spout.

As much as she hated to admit it, Bonnibel was probably right about one thing. Betty refused to believe that there was any real connection between Simon and Ricardio. It might as well have been his bow tie or boots that had come to life.

.

It took a bit of time, but Bonnibel got them all outside. Simon had woken up eventually, but he'd passed out again when she removed him from those life support... tendrils. Probably just shock. She hoped.

Since it had happened magically, the loss of his heart wouldn't kill him straight away. She didn't know exactly how long he had, though. He needed real treatment, fast.

Finn Ice and Gunter were both stable, though she couldn't wake them up. How long had they been out? Zanoit-derived poisons only got stronger the longer they were left untreated.

Lady had second degree burns all over her body. She was awake, but barely, and Bonnibel felt terrible for bringing her along. If only she'd known the dungeon was so dangerous.

So. She had four people in need of varying levels of medical attention. She wished the tentacles hadn't taken her backpack, but there was only so much she could do in the field.

Bonnibel turned back towards the ocean. Approaching the shore was a raft made of tree trunks tied together with kelp. Betty had come back with the driftwood she'd promised to find.

Bonnibel braced herself, shoved her face into the freezing water, and said "Thanks, Betty!"

"No problem," Betty replied.

Bonnibel still didn't think Betty liked her much, and she couldn't really blame her. She was just glad Betty was mature enough put aside their differences when something more came up. And it was good to see Simon getting over his silly crush on Bonnibel and dating someone his own age.

He wasn't completely over her, if Ricardio was any indication, but... At least he had a girlfriend.

Bonnibel pulled the raft over to shore and lifted the others on one at a time. There was room as long as Lady coiled up a bit.

As she lifted Simon, he groaned and opened his eyes. "What...? Where's B...? Is...? C...?"

It took a second for Bonnibel to figure out what he was trying to say. "Betty's fine, Simon. She's going to help up the river, to my lab."

She put him on the raft. He tried to sit up, and fell back down. "Ri...?"

"The one between the Ice Kingdom and the Monster Kingdom, of course!" He was in worse shape than she'd thought if he couldn't remember the river he lived right next to him.

Betty poked her head out of the water and gurgled at Simon, then dove back under.

The current began to pick up, and the raft floated west, towards the mouth of the river.

"We can't go upstream without a method of propulsion, so... Simon?"

Simon's eyes were closed, but he seemed to be awake. He chuckled until he ran out of breath, then chuckled again.

Bonnibel felt his forehead, but he was quite cool. At least he didn't have a fever.

.

The trip went smoothly until sundown, when Simon started trying to take off his vest.

"Simon, what are you doing?" Bonnibel demanded. She grabbed his wrist. It was cold enough out here without getting naked.

Simon tried to jerk his hand away. "I'm just so hot," he said, a bit more clearly than before. "I'll sweat to death if I can't get this on."

"Did he say he was hot?" said Lady. She pressed a leg against his forehead, then pulled it back in alarm. "He's ice cold!"

Bonnibel felt Simon's forehead as well. Lady was right. She couldn't get an exact reading without a thermometer, but most mammals were definitely not supposed to get this cool.

"Hey, stop that," Simon slurred.

What was the matter with him? He hadn't really put on the crown, had he? His temperature was down, he was acting very strange... No, the physical changes didn't happen that fast. Besides, his eyes were still black.

It was something else, probably something to do with the loss of his heart... Oh! Of course! Bonnibel slapped herself in the forehead. "How could I have been so stupid?" It wasn't magic at all. "Lady, Simon has hypothermia. He can't regulate his body temperature without a heart, we need to warm him up. Are you strong enough to phase him into your body?" They should never have taken him so close to the Ice Kingdom.

Lady concentrated for a second, then said "I can't. I'm sorry. I've been nothing but a burden to you this entire time!"

"Don't say sorry," said Bonnibel. "You're not well either. Maybe-"

"I'm sorry," said Simon, for no apparent reason. "I'm so sorry." He trailed his hand in the water and mumbled to himself. "Heheh. The water's cool. It's so cool, it's... it's rad. On the crazy sick scale, it's at least a solid... twenty-seven... Maybe twenty-eight..."

"Simon, quit apologising!" said Bonnibel. "And get your hand out of there." At this rate he wouldn't even last the night.

Lady used her teeth to pull his arm out by the sleeve. "Simon! You'll make yourself even colder!"

"What?" said Simon. "I... I don't... Don't try to confuse me, Lady. I know what you really meant. You really said... She said... Simon. Is that... What is that? My name?" He looked into the water, keeping his hand out this time. "Look, it's Betty!"

Betty, who'd been keeping pace with the raft, saw them looking and waved.

"Hi, Betty," said Simon, waving back as Lady pressed against him to warm him up. "I think you're one of my favourite princess, Betty. Hey, Betty. Let's have babies, Betty. And let's teach them to be good babies."

It was probably a good thing Betty couldn't hear him. Bonnibel moved Simon to the center of the raft and coiled Lady around him, before moving Gunter onto his chest. She left Finn Ice where he was. He was naturally- he was always cold.

.

Simon opened his eyes. He had vague memories of fire and ice - dreams, he guessed - but he felt okay now. Not great, but he didn't seem to be dying.

Where was he? Some sort of hospital? He sat up.

Yes, this was the hospital in the Monster Kingdom. He could tell by the spider patterns on the bed curtains. He'd ended up here enough times to know what they looked like. And to able to tell when they weren't patterns.

Simon stood unsteadily and opened the curtains. Bonnibel was talking to Doctor Princess at the far end of the room, but she looked around at the noise. "Simon! You're awake!"

"What happened?" said Simon. He took a step, and frowned. His body was making a weird sound. A... rattling? Yes, he was rattling. "What is that?"

Bonnibel looked him over. "Oh, that's just the maracas I used to make you a new heart. Don't worry, it should go away by the time the chest wound heals."

That wouldn't take long. Or it hadn't taken long last time Ricardio had shown up. Simon pulled his chest open and felt around inside. Bonnibel was right. There were definitely maracas in there. And... what was that sticky stuff holding them together? Toffee? Bonnibel did use a lot of candy as biomass substitute.

He guessed he probably shouldn't poke it.

Simon still had more questions than he could count, but he asked the most important one first. "Where's Gunter? Is he okay?"

Bonnibel smiled. "Yes. I just gave him and Finn the antidote I devised. He's over there. Gunter, I mean."

Simon sprinted to the bed she'd indicated and opened the curtain. "Gunter! Are you okay?"

"Yeah," replied Gunter slowly. His voice sounded a bit weak, but he had been poisoned for a really long time. Simon had faith in Bonnibel's skills. "Are you?"

"I think so," said Simon. He was definitely regaining his strength. "Bonnibel made me a new heart. Listen!" He moved from side to side, jiggling the maracas in his chest.

They both laughed.

"I hear mirth!" said Finn Ice from behind them. He picked Simon up and shook him vigorously. "You're right dude, this is hilarious! Shaka shaka shaka!"

"Put me down!" said Simon. He was beginning to get light-headed, like he'd been on the raft.

Oh Glob. The raft! Simon elbowed Finn Ice to make him drop him and said "Gunter! We were on a raft, and it was so hot I acted crazy! I have to go apologise to Betty! I think... I think I punned, Gunter!"

Gunter groaned weakly in reply. His eyes were closed.

"Gunter?" Simon repeated. He touched his forehead in an attempt to clear his thoughts, and leaned over the bed. "Gunter, what's the matter?" Was he beyond help? Had the Zanoits spent too long in his system? What was going on?

"Not Gunter!" said Finn Ice, pushing Simon out of the way. "Gunter, speak to me!"

Gunter waved his flipper weakly, then fell back on the bed. There was something wrong with his stomach. It was... growing? Should it be growing? That wasn't normal, even for magic penguins. Right?

"Oh no!" said Doctor Princess, behind them. "It's starting already? Get out of the way!"

Simon grabbed Finn Ice and let her pass. If anyone could help Gunter, Doctor Princess could. She was Uuu's leading specialist in treating little tuxedo people.

"Out of the way, short stuff!" said Finn Ice, trying to pull Simon away. "I wanna see!" After a couple of ineffective tugs, he gave up and froze Simon's legs.

Simon tried to pull his feet out, but the ice was too thick. "Hey!" Great. And on a day he was wearing shoes, too. They were going to be soaked by the time he got out of this.

Finn Ice tried to push past Doctor Princess to see what was going on. "Dee-Prins! Dee-Pree, I want in on this!"

Simon looked around wildly, but Bonnibel seemed to have disappeared. He had an idea of his own, but... He didn't like it. Oh well. If he cared about Gunter's safety, he had no choice. "Finn Ice, wait. Listen to this." He jerked from side to side, setting off the maracas.

Finn Ice immediately forgot what he was doing and laughed. "Brilliant! That's brilliant!" He slapped his knees. "You're like, Simon the Human Percussion Section!"

Simon didn't know how, but he managed to keep it up until Doctor Princess was done with... whatever. Emergency surgery?

"You need to get some rest," he heard Doctor Princess say.

"Junk that," said Gunter. "I've been resting all week. I've got to show Simon!"

Simon looked around, but he couldn't twist far enough to see the bed. "Gunter?"

Finn Ice gasped theatrically.

Then Gunter walked into his field of vision, holding five eggs in his arms.

"Eggs?" said Simon, puzzled. "Are they..." Gunter had been sick, and now he wasn't, and he was holding eggs... "Were you _pregnant_? Why didn't you tell me?"

Gunter began rubbing each egg over his body, one by one. "I dunno. I just never found the right time."

How had he got pregnant? Maybe he really was a woman. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell with Gunter.

Doctor Princess applied a stethoscope to each of the five eggs. "Good news. They all sound perfectly healthy."

Gunter pumped his flipper. "Yes! Simon! I'm going to be a parent! I'm going to have five babies!"

Simon smiled weakly, noticed Finn Ice reaching to pick him up again, and ducked.

"So, who's the... other parent?" said Doctor Princess. "If you don't mind me asking."

Gunter just shrugged, and Simon wondered if even he knew.


	3. Mortal Drawback

Simon huddled on a plastic chair opposite the Monster Kingdom hospital's single operating theatre, knees pulled up to his chest. Marceline was alive. At least she was alive. But the way she'd looked when they'd pulled her out of the Lich's well... She'd been... floppy. And melty. It was like she was made of wax and someone had brought her too close to the Fire Kingdom.

Finn Ice poked him, breaking into his thoughts. "So... I still don't get it. That slamacow puppy I kidnapped just now was really... princess Whatsherface?"

"Queen Marceline," Simon growled. They wouldn't have got Marceline here so fast without Finn Ice's help, but if he hadn't been his normal crazy idiot kidnapping butterfingered self, they wouldn't have needed to.

"Well why didn't you tell me?" demanded Finn Ice. "I thought we were bros!"

Simon clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails dug into his flesh. "I did tell you." They were not, and never would be, bros.

Finn Ice blew a raspberry. "Whatever. You should have told me louder! Now she's probably dead and it's all your fault. Nice work, S the H."

Simon jumped up. "My...!" He sat down with an effort, but he couldn't control the volume of his voice. "How is it my fault?!"

"Hey," said Gunter. "Don't go blaming him for something he didn't do." He patted Simon on the shoulder. "Are you okay, Simon?"

"Huh?" said Simon. Of course he was okay. It was Marceline they needed to worry about. "Yeah. He's just being a donk, like always." He might have done some things he wasn't proud of, but being in the same room when Finn Ice did something stupid wasn't one of them. Why would Gunter even think that?

"A donk who's telling the truth," said Finn Ice. He folded his arms and pouted.

Simon sighed heavily. Why was Finn Ice even still hanging around? He obviously didn't care about Marceline's wellbeing. Why didn't he just go play charades with Jake or whatever he normally did with his spare time?

The door opened, and Simon jumped up again. "Marceline!"

It wasn't Marceline. It was just Nurse Diptera, rubbing her front legs together the way she always did when she was on duty. It looked like a nervous habit, but she was actually grooming herself. The gross juice that her legs oozed was not good for patients, even other flies. "You can come in now."

Simon pushed past her into the airy room, yelled "Sorry, Nurse Diptera!" when he realised what he'd done, and rushed to the side of the bed. "Marceline, are you awake?"

"She's..." began Doctor Zombi.

"I'm fine," said Marceline at the same time. "I just need to rest." Her eyes were open, but she sounded weak. She seemed to have regained her shape, though, and her skin was a healthy grey colour.

Gunter climbed onto the bed and ran his flippers through Marceline's hair. Worryingly, she didn't stop him.

"I hope you're right," said Bonnibel. Bonnibel wasn't really a doctor, but she did know a lot about magic and life and how to preserve life in spite of magic. "We don't have any monster blood left."

Gunter slid off the bed and said "I thought vampires only drank blood for the colour."

"Usually, but sometimes it can help with-"

"Oh, she's okay!" said Finn Ice, coming up behind them. "I bet that's a relief, huh Simon? You didn't kill her after all!"

Simon whirled around. "What is wrong with you, you... jerk?!" Only his relief that Marceline was alive kept him from doing something he'd regret.

"Temper, temper," said Finn Ice, waving his finger. "Just for that remark, I'm not gonna tell you about the really, really, vitally important thing I saw!"

"What?" said Bonnibel. "What did you see?"

Finn Ice shot a bolt of ice over his shoulder, smashed a window, and flew backwards out of the room. "I'm... not... telling!"

Simon screamed the only word he could think of. "Darn!"

Marceline mumbled something about wizards.

Simon tried to compose himself. "Sorry, Marcy. He won't bother you anymore." She seemed a bit better, but he was sure she was still in shock from everything that had happened.

But she was alive.

Now they had to make sure she stayed that way.

.

"Marceline, wake up!" said Simon.

Marceline stirred in her bed. She'd been discharged from the hospital a few hours ago, when Doctor Zombi had found nothing wrong with her. Apparently blood was some sort of cure-all for vampires.

"Marceline!" said Gunter. "Look! We're putting on a magic show for you!" They had top hats and wands and everything.

Bed rest was boring. She needed something to spice it up. Gunter had been sentenced to bed rest a couple of times, and he didn't know what he would have done if Simon hadn't been willing to entertain him.

"It's just fake magic!" added Simon.

This was going to be so great. Fake magic was the best kind of magic. With real magic, either you had it or you didn't. Nothing in between. Fake magic at least took some skill.

Marceline just stared at them. She didn't even smile, but that wasn't that unusual for her. She was not a smiley person.

Simon coughed uncomfortably. "We're gonna start off with a card trick. Just take a card, and we'll..."

Marceline abruptly sat up, and Simon fanned out the cards for her, but instead of reaching for them, she flopped forwards and wriggled like she was trying to sniff something out.

Gunter shrunk and hid behind Simon. "Is that supposed to happen?" he whispered.

"I don't know," whispered Simon. "Listen, we gotta be cool. We can't make her feel bad while she's sick."

"Okay..." said Gunter reluctantly. She was probably just having seizures or something. Or... maybe something less dangerous sounding. "Maybe we should try something else. You perfected that rope illusion yet?"

"I think so- Hey! Where'd she go?"

"What?" Gunter looked back to see Marceline missing, and the bathroom door open.

They ran in to find her searching for something under the sink. "Oi! Marcy!" Gunter cloned himself a few times and dragged her back to bed. "You shouldn't be up! Just relax and enjoy the show!"

They lifted her onto her bed, and Gunter went back to the doorway to get the ropes. Even if they couldn't do the rope illusion, there were plenty of escape artist things they could try! It was good practice for adventures, too!

Simon had been carrying the props, so it took a couple of minutes to untangle everything. Simon could tangle something just by looking at it. He could probably tangle a basketball.

He managed to extricate the ropes, and turned back to the bed to see Marceline whispering something to Simon.

Simon said "Of course I will, Marceline," then headed for the door. "Gunter, Marceline wants me to get her some things. I'll be back in a minute."

Gunter held out the ropes. "What about the tricks? I can't do them on my own." He couldn't just clone himself. You didn't use real magic in a fake magic show. That was just stupid. Also he didn't have fingers.

"Just do that keyboard thing," Simon suggested. He ran out the door. "BRB!"

It was a good thing Gunter carried at least four wireless keyboards with him at all times. He got them out one by one and cloned himself five times. "You like music, don't you, Marceline?" Of course she did. That was one of her defining traits, like being moody and having mixed feelings about everyone.

All six of him began to play a piece he'd composed himself. It was hard to focus on playing with so many clones. It was easy to slap bad guys with multiple bodies, but music was complicated. He didn't know how anyone managed to play with eight fingers. Or ten fingers? How many did people have? He could never remember. Nine fingers?

He was so lost in concentration that he barely heard the growling from behind until it became screaming. One of his clones looked around, and he faltered. "Marcy...?"

She was twitching and moving around like some kind of... demon. She was a demon, or a half-demon or something, but it wasn't usually so obvious. Maybe she really was having a seizure!

She seemed to run out of energy, and fell back weakly.

"I'm sorry, Marceline," said Gunter. She was even sicker than he'd thought. Maybe now wasn't the best time for such an experimental piece. "Listen, I'll play you something else to make you feel better!"

This one was only a two person piece. Maybe three in some places. All right. 3/4 time and... "Marceline," he sang. "You fell into the toxic goo, but soon you'll feel brand new, because I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll-"

The was a whoomph and everything went up in flames. Gunter froze, then turned around. Marceline was twitching and writhing all over her bed. Her bed that was also on fire. "Er... I'll... I'll just leave you alone then."

He packed up his keyboards as quickly as he could, reabsorbed his clones, and ran outside. "Oh Gob, what was that?"

Simon came back down the corridor, with a bunch of bottles and containers in his arms.

Gunter ran up to him. "Simon! Simon! Can Marceline normally set things on fire?" Was it some sort of demon thing? Maybe? Was that it?

Simon stopped. "Huh? No, she doesn't have any demon powers. Just vampire powers. I don't think she has demon powers..."

Gunter took a closer look at what Simon was holding. "Why do you have lighter fluid and ammonia?" That was just going to make things worse! And things were already really bad.

Simon glanced down. "She asked me to get it. I guess she needs corrosive liquid to recover? And uh... radioactive stuff. Like she needed all that monster blood."

Gunter grabbed Simon's leg, multiplied, and grabbed his other leg, his head, his stomach, and his shoulders. "No, no, she doesn't need any of that, Simon! I think there's something seriously wrong with-"

Marceline came out the door, brushed away one of the clones' flippers, and took all the bottles. "Thanks."

She'd closed the door by the time Gunter had time to react. "What! Don't take- No..."

Simon was beginning to look annoyed. He shook off Gunter's clones. "Gunter, what is the matter?"

"She set everything on fire!" said Gunter frantically. "She has demon powers now!"

Simon froze. "What?! Is she okay?"

"No!" said Gunter. "That's what I'm trying to tell you!" He threw open the door. "Look!"

The room was still smouldering, but Marceline was gone.

Simon stepped inside gingerly. "Maybe... Maybe it's just part of the healing process. Humans and penguins sneeze, half-demon vampires set everything on fire."

Gunter shook his head, then pointed at the bathroom door. "Look! She's in the bathroom!" He ran for it, but Simon held him back.

"Gunter! What are you doing? You can't spy on girls in the bathroom! I thought you knew that now!" He called through the keyhole. "Marceline? You okay in there?"

"I'm busy!"

Simon pulled back. "See? She's fine."

Gunter looked in the keyhole, and recoiled. "Simon..."

"Gunter, what are you doing?" said Simon. He tried to pull him away, so Gunter grew until his head scraped the ceiling.

"She..." Gunter tried to sort out what he'd seen. "She turned huge and she's got arms like spider legs and she's drinking something green out of the bathtub! It's like bathtub booze, but green! Look!"

Reluctantly, Simon put his eye to the keyhole, and gasped. "Holy glob!" He pushed ineffectually on the door, then got out his lockpicks.

"Hurry!" said Gunter. Maybe he could shrink through the keyhole and... No, Simon was using the keyhole.

Simon rotated the bendy pick thing, and shoved the door open to reveal Marceline holding up the bathtub and pouring the green liquid directly into her mouth. "Marceline!"

They ran at her, and Marceline hit them so hard everything went black.

.

Simon woke up uncomfortable. He was half leaning against a wall, his head ached, and someone was poking him. He opened his eyes to see Finn Ice staring down at him. "You!"

"Hey Simon," said Finn Ice. "I was thinking, if I saved Marceline from being possessed by the Lich, maybe she'll be so grateful she'll turn into a puppy again and live with me forever! I covered my entire castle in newspaper specially!"

"She's never gonna- Did you say she was possessed by the Lich?" said Simon. That would explain a lot, actually. He just wished the information had come from someone less... entirely responsible for her current state. "How can you know that?"

He sat up and looked around. It looked like Marceline had hit them right through the wall and into the next room. Gunter seemed to be awake, but groggy.

Finn Ice pointed at his eyes. "Wizard eyes, duh! I saw something spirit-y from the Lich float right into Princess Puppydog! At least, I think that's what I saw... It's kind of hard to tell sometimes... Most of the time..." He sighed.

Wizard what? How many powers did this guy have? "Why didn't you say something before?" Simon demanded.

Finn Ice scowled. "I was _about_ to, before you flew off the handle!"

"I didn't fly off-" began Simon, but Gunter put a hand on his arm.

"Let's deal with the Lich first," he suggested, pointing outside through a gaping hole in the palace wall.

Marceline was rampaging through the Monster Kingdom, pausing every so often to destroy a building or smack away unwary looters.

"Come on!" said Simon. He pulled out the sweater, and jumped on Gunter's back as Gunter grew huge.

Now that they knew it was the Lich, they knew how to deal with her. It.

When they got close enough, Simon waved the sweater and yelled "Marceline! You're like a big sister to me!"

Marceline glanced around, and smacked him off Gunter's back and all the way into the same wall as last time.

Simon sat up, dazed. "It didn't work this time..." Why didn't it work this time? Did the fact that the Lich was inhabiting Marceline's body cancel out the familial caring? No, that didn't make sense...

Gunter was still out there, but no matter how large he grew, he couldn't stand up to the Lich's blows. He was slowing it down, but only by a little.

Simon didn't want to have do this, but... He turned to Finn Ice, who was watching the carnage with interest, and said "Finn Ice, will you help us stop the Lich?" With his abilities, Finn Ice would be practically unstoppable if he wasn't an idiot. At the least he could at least freeze the Lich for them.

"Huh?" said Finn Ice. "No way! One of these days, Simon, you're gonna have to learn that what you do has consequence, and-"

Something in Simon snapped. "I didn't flipping do anything!" he yelled. "You're the one who kidnapped her, and you're the idiot who... who got the dropsies and nearly killed her, and now you won't even help? Do you want the Lich to destroy the world? Is that it? Do you want to die thinking up new ways to blame me for your mistakes?"

Simon ran out of words and subsided, his fists clenched.

Finn Ice actually looked frightened. He pressed himself against the far wall like he was trying to pass through it.

"Will you help or not?" Simon demanded.

Finn Ice looked at the floor and mumbled "Yeah. Okay. Okay."

He took Simon from the hand and lifted him effortlessly into the air, which was actually sort of fun. Not for the first time, Simon wondered about the source of Finn Ice's powers. He was an ice wizard, yet he needed his crown before he could do anything magical. Was it some kind of symbiosis thing? Or maybe one of those split soul situations?

Finn Ice quickly snapped back to his normal self. "Man Simon, you can get mad when you want to! You were all like-" he imitated Simon's voice poorly - "You pushed me too far. Prepare to be nerded. Flip is a curse word." He giggled.

Simon sighed and said "Listen. I have a plan. Throw me at the Lich, and I'll distract it while you freeze it from the legs up. Do you think you can remember that?"

In reply, Finn Ice heaved Simon at the Lich.

"WaitIwasn'tready!" Simon flew face first into Marceline's back and grabbed hold of her hair. "Gunter! Help me out here!"

Gunter shrunk down to his normal size, made a few copies of himself, and run up the Lich's arms. "Do you have a plan?" called the closest clone.

"Of course!" said Simon. He pointed at Finn Ice, who was just floating there watching them. "We're going with plan Emergency Oscar."

"Which one was that-" The Lich grabbed at them, and Gunter's clones scattered.

Simon grabbed some of Marceline's hair in both hands and swung over to her face. "Take... sorry Marcy... Take that!" he yelled, punching it in the eye.

The Lich roared and slapped at its face, nearly knocking Simon off. He managed to grab onto a finger, pulled himself up, ran to the back of its hand, and looked down. Finn Ice was still just... standing there. Watching. "Finn Ice! What are you waiting for? Do the ice thing!"

"Oh yeah!" said Finn Ice. He threw ice magic at the Lich's feet and yelled "Lions in the taiga! Lions in the taiga!"

Simon braced himself on the Lich's thumb and dug his feet into the soft part leading to its fingers, trying to keep it distracted. The Lich attempted to shake him off, and when Simon saw the ice approach its arms, he let go and flew halfway across the Monster Kingdom.

He land on a giant Gunter's stomach, and climbed onto his back as Gunter ran to see what had happened to the Lich. Gunter had very sensitive stomach feathers.

They found the Lich standing where they'd left it, completely immobilised by a thick layer of ice and surrounded by a crowd of onlookers seemed to have materialised out of thin air.

"You did it!" said Simon, putting a hand on Finn Ice's shoulder. Even though all he'd really done was clean up his own mess, it was still very impressive. Not many people could immobilise the Lich, especially almost single-handed.

"I did?" said Finn Ice. He looked at his hands, then at Simon. "This is some kind of prank, isn't it? There's camera hidden in your hair, isn't there?"

"What? No!" Simon felt his hair, which was getting a bit long. He guessed it would have been too much to ask for Finn Ice to both save everyone and make any sense.

He craned his neck at the frozen Lich. What now? Could they even help Marceline now that- what was that creaking noise? It was Marceline. She was falling over! "Finn Ice, do something!" The ice would shatter if it hit the ground at that speed, and Simon didn't even want to think about what that would do to Marceline. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gunter grow and race to catch her, but there was no way he could make it in time.

"Like what?" Finn Ice demanded.

"For the love of Grod you control ice!" Simon screamed. Why couldn't he just act normal? For once in his life?

"Oh yeah!" Finn Ice raised his hands, grunted with effort, and stopped her just before she hit the ground. "Ugh... she's really heavy... Do you think she'll be this big next time she turns into a dog? I'm gonna have to expand my castle." Despite his complaints, he pushed her back upright, and added more ice around her feet.

Simon stared at her until he was certain she wasn't going to fall again, then turned to the crowd. "Uh... now what?"

"Does anyone know how to exorcise avatars of destruction?" said Gunter.

They couldn't just leave her like this. It was possible, if they kept her in the Ice Kingdom, but it couldn't be the only solution.

"Perhaps I could be of assistance." Peppermint Butler emerged from the crowd. Simon thought maybe Bonnibel had made him or something? He didn't really know where candy people came from. They kind of creeped him out, to tell the truth.

.

They moved Marceline to an open courtyard while Finn Ice grumbled. He said she was too heavy to push so far, and he seemed to be telling the truth, so he hovered her a few inches off the ground while a few giant Gunters pushed.

They set her down, and Finn Ice made an audible sigh of relief. He was dripping with sweat.

"Stand back, please," said Peppermint Butler, producing a piece of chalk. He drew some kind of demonic symbol, sat down, and began chanting in a harsh language that Simon didn't recognise.

Simon waited until he'd finished, then said "What's that? Is it because she's a demon? Is it like, her native language or something?"

Peppermint Butler started. "Uh... sure." He clapped his hands, and there was a high, crystalline note. "Anyways, the Lich should be gone now. You can release her."

Simon looked at Finn Ice.

Finn Ice put his head on one side. "What are you looking at me for? Is... is it my beard? My beard is _awesome_!" He shot a bolt of ice at Simon.

Simon stepped out of the way and said "Did you see the Lich leave her body?"

"Uh, I wasn't paying attention," said Finn Ice. "I was thinking about what to have for dinner. It's Jake's turn to cook, and _Jake never cooks_." He frowned deeply.

Simon sighed again and said "Just get the ice off her." They were just going to have to trust Peppermint Butler's word.

The ice shrank away, and Marceline shrank as well. She collapsed onto her stomach.

Simon and Gunter ran to her, yelling her name.

"Are you okay?" said Simon.

"Are you awake?" Gunter added.

"Say something!" said Simon. If something had gone wrong...

Abruptly, Marceline shrunk even further, then stirred. "Huh?"

"Marceline..." said Simon. Her voice. It was off. She sounded... childish.

Marceline sat up. "That's weird."

"You're a little girl!" said Gunter. He reached out to touch her hair, then seemed to think better of it. "How old are you? One? Two?"

Marceline looked at her hands and said "Yeah, I'm a kid. I guess it was... uh... actually? I have no idea." The way she spoke didn't quite fit her little girl voice.

Simon hugged her and said "I'm just happy you're all right! You are all right, aren't you?" He made a mental note to look up cases of vampires or demons reverting to a younger age when he got the chance.

"Yeah, I think so," said Marceline. She gently touched her neck.

Simon looked at the area she'd touched. Something else seemed off, but for a few seconds, he couldn't figure out what it was. Then he saw. No bites. "You're not a vampire anymore!"

Marceline frowned. "Yeah."

Simon couldn't tell if she was disappointed or glad.

"I'm bored!" Finn Ice announced. "Hurry up and turn into a dog and come live with me!"

"I can't!" Marceline called. "I'm not a vampire anymore!"

Finn Ice's face fell. "You... can't?" Then he shrugged. "Whatevs." He flew away.

Simon watched him go, wondering what had happened to the Lich. Surely if they'd just unleashed it on some other poor creature Peppermint Butler would have said something. It probably couldn't survive long without a host. It was gone. The world was safe.


	4. Simon the Human&Gunter the Penguin

The far side of the portal opened into a dim, starry void, filled with floating rocks that looked like they'd come off the wall of a giant's castle. Not too far ahead, the Lich jumped from rock to rock towards a yellow cube, barely even slowed by the chain of Gunter clones clinging to its ankle.

Simon still couldn't believe he'd let the Lich trick them like that. He should have interpreted that dream better. He should have been more suspicious when it had refused to touch the crown gems. He should have thought. And now Billy was... he didn't know what Billy was. Maybe he was just possessed, but how had he ripped apart like that to reveal the Lich underneath? Magic? Was there any magic that even worked that way?

Gunter smacked into a rock, and his clones lost their grip and fell into the void.

"Gunter, quick!" said Simon, pointing at the Lich, which was already climbing into the yellow cube. "It's heading for Prismo's time room!" He was pretty sure that was what that thing was. He wondered what the Lich wanted with an almighty being, and none of the possibilities he came up with were good.

Gunter sat up, groggy from the pain of losing his clones. "Oh, right." He grew, scooped up Simon, and jumped from rock to rock, much faster than Simon could have on his own.

They arrived at the cube just in time to see the Lich laugh and disappear completely. The only thing inside was some sort of pink humanoid, which was confined to the walls and floor like a projection, or a shadow.

"Hey," said the projection, which Simon assumed was Prismo. "Hey! Did you guys see that? You know that was a ghost wearing a dead guy."

Simon sat on the ledge leading inside and put his head in his hands. A dead guy. The Lich was wearing a dead guy.

The dead guy was Billy. Billy was dead.

Prismo calling the Lich a ghost was interesting, but Billy was dead.

"That might be the nastiest thing I've ever seen," Prismo continued. He pointed his hands. "Na-na-na-na-nasty! Nasty jazz! Nasty-" He stopped abruptly, like someone had cut him off.

Simon looked around, but he couldn't see why Prismo had stopped. Nothing seemed to have changed.

And Billy was dead.

"Ooh, wait," said Prismo. "That was your friend Billy, wasn't it." He averted his eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean nothing by it. I mean, I have a lot of nasty friends. My uncle is nasty. I'm basically honorary nasty."

Simon jumped down to the floor of the cube. "How did you know that?" He was some sort of god, so maybe he was omniscient. But then why would he say something so insensitive in the first place? He was either a Magic Man-level trickster, or...

"Huh?" Prismo looked away again. "Uh. No reason. It's just... this thing I have. Don't worry about it."

According to Booko, the time room and Prismo were eternal and constant, but because of the theory of infinitely branching timelines, there were multiple iterations of the room layered on top of each other, so that everyone who entered didn't have to contend with every possible alternate version of themselves. But Prismo could see, and individually interact with, every timeline at once.

"I bet someone from another timeline told you!" said Simon. Despite the situation, it was still fascinating to speak to a being who existed on multiple planes at once.

"No... Actually, yes," said Prismo. He pointed at Simon. "There's this other human boy standing right where you are, and his... You know, I shouldn't be talking about it."

Gunter walked around the room and waved his arms around. "You mean to say that there's another version of us right here, on some other plane of reality?"

"Well..." said Prismo. He looked around. "I just granted his wish, so he's gone now. I mean, the human I was talking about."

"Wish?" said Simon. Prismo granted wishes? Just to anyone who walked in? Could that be why the Lich had been so determined to get here?

"See, that's just he said," said Prismo. "That right there is what they call circums... Circumstanti..." He frowned. "Oh, I can never remember how to say that."

That didn't explain anything. "What about the Lich? What did he wish for?" Simon was afraid to find out, but he had to ask.

"Oh yeah," said Prismo. "He wished for the extinction of all life and I did it. Guess it changed his timeline or something?"

"What?!" said Simon. "E-Extinction?!" That couldn't be possible. Everyone couldn't be dead when they'd all probably been alive a couple of minutes ago. Things didn't work like that. Adventuring didn't work like that.

Gunter felt his face, and said "We're not dead, are we Simon? I don't feel dead." He checked his pulse. "No. We're not."

Oh yeah. The two of them counted as life.

"Oh," said Prismo, "that's because you're still safe in my time room until you make your wish."

"Our wish..." said Simon. They could still fix this, if they were smart. "What did the other me wish for?"

Maybe they could get some help from this other timeline. He had a few ideas, but his head was still swimming from shock and lack of sleep. It sounded like the other him was a bit more level-headed, if he'd already made a wish.

"Huh?" said Prismo.

"You know, that other human you mentioned," said Gunter. "What was his wish?"

"Oh, him?" said Prismo. He hesitated. "He wished the Lich never even ever existed."

That was a good one. No Lich, no extinction of all life. And no dead Billy. Simon could see a couple of holes, though. The Lich had existed since at least the Mushroom War. Wishing it out of existence might have unforeseen effects on the timeline. Maybe it was better to wish for it to disappear just before it killed Billy. Or even right after they exorcised it from Marceline. Or before it escaped from the tar lake.

The Lich had done a lot of damage over the course of its existence, however long that had been. Eliminating it might be worth the change to the timeline. The fact that his double had settled on that wish in particular had to mean something. Maybe he knew something about time alteration that this Simon didn't.

"That's my wish, too," said Simon.

.

Simon didn't even have time to take another breath before he began to disappear, just like the Lich. Gunter watched with his mouth open, until he was completely gone.

Gunter looked around frantically. "What just happened? Where'd Simon go?" All this disappearing was making him nervous. What was it about wishes that made people disappear?

The shadow guy didn't seem worried. The shadow of a mug fell down the wall from someplace, and into his hand. "Oh, when he wished for the Lich to have never existed-" He took a sip from the mug and it fell back up and out of sight- "Simon left my time room and entered his wish altered reality. We can watch him on my TV wall."

A real, three-dimensional remote control materialised from a beam of light, and the shadow guy pressed a button, transforming an entire wall into a television.

"Ooh!" Gunter wanted a TV like that.

On the TV was Simon, lying on a bed and playing with a ball and paddle. The bed had the same leopard print cover as Simon's, but there were no animal pelts. Just a cover and white sheets. The floor was green and looked carpeted, not like the wood floor of their bedroom at home.

They watched for a few minutes. At one point, Simon missed with the paddle, muttered "Clamballs," and shook out his hand before hitting the ball back and forth again.

"So..." said Gunter eventually. "I uh, I didn't get your name."

"Oh, me?" said the shadow guy. "It's Prismo. I'm sorry, usually you get here, you already know who I am." He gave an embarrassed laugh.

"Ah, I can see that, I can see that," said Gunter. "I suppose you'd really have to try to get all the way out here. My name's Gunter. Gunter the Penguin. Goon-ter, Gun-ther, any pronunciation's good. Gon-ter..."

Prismo nodded. On the screen, Simon continued to play with the ball and paddle.

"He... He ever gonna stop with that thing?" said Gunter. He'd seen more interesting movies. Airplanes Taking Off was a more interesting movie.

"Not for like, twelve hours or something," said Prismo, after a second's thought. "Hang on a second, I'll fast forward to the interesting part." He pressed a couple of buttons on the remote, and the image sped up to a blur.

When it stopped, Simon was sitting in a horse drawn cart in a dry-looking landscape that Gunter didn't recognise, and he looked older. His waistcoat had sleeves on it. It was more like just... a coat. The formal kind. He was also wearing a scarf, but that was probably just because he was cold.

He still didn't have a beard.

There was a woman driving the cart who looked a lot like Betty, but she had legs and no gills, so it couldn't be her. She looked older too, so maybe it was just something that happened to mermaids that nobody knew about yet.

"How- How far did you fast forward?" said Gunter, touching the screen.

Prismo shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. Five years... thirty years... something like that."

Either of those could be true for all Gunter knew. He was no good at judging the ages of humans.

.

The sun was going down by the time they arrived at the little town they'd be staying at. It got cold quickly out here in the wilderness, and Simon was glad he'd dressed warmly.

Betty put the reins of the horse into one hand, and yawned with the other. "Is this the place?" she said, looking ahead at the row of stalls, which were mostly empty at this time of day. "Are you sure it's even a town?"

Simon laughed. "Don't let any of the locals hear you say that." This area was dry and poor in soil, and had been sparsely populated ever since the world had thawed out. He was almost certain that they'd be the first to really examine the place.

There was a long haired man with a burn scar over one eye lounging against one of the stalls, watching a group of kids pack away a towering pile of spoons. He turned around as the cart approached, and grinned unpleasantly. "Outsiders!"

Simon kept his eyes on him. "Yes?" Nobody out here was that happy to see a stranger unless they wanted something from them. He wore a silly outfit that looked too small on him, but there was a very serious looking sword slung over his back. He was probably in a gang, but Simon had dealt with gangs before. As long as he didn't think they had any treasure on them, they'd be fine.

The man stared into Simon's face for an uncomfortably long time, then said "This is Destiny Gang turf. Mr and Mrs Noseless gotta pay the toll."

Simon covered his face self-consciously. "And what's the toll?" He knew gang logic. They couldn't just take every traveller's money and then kill them. It tended to upset the travellers' home countries, and provoke them into sending militia or mercenaries to wipe the gang out. Nobody cared enough to actually defend somewhere so isolated, and another gang would probably spring up in its place, but the original thugs would still be dead.

"You're not actually thinking of paying, are you?" said Betty, who'd never been this far from the city before.

"Toll is five flames. Pay up." The man held out his hand impatiently.

Simon reached into his coat pocket and counted out the coins. "It's cheaper than hiring a bodyguard," he told Betty. "And safer." He'd been in a couple of expeditions with bodyguards who'd decided to rob them on the way back. His partner at the time had been good with energy guns, which was lucky, because Simon was not much of a fighter himself. Betty was, but it was still safer to just pay the gangs.

"Yeah, give it here," said the man, snatching the coins from Simon's hand. He squinted at Simon again, then made a dismissive gesture and walked away.

When he was sure nobody was close by, Simon got out of the cab, unfolded a map, and oriented it to the north. If he was right, they should start looking about half a mile north north east from here. He got back in, pointed west and said "Let's make camp over that way." There was no need to tip anyone off, especially in gang territory.

Betty urged the horse on. "Do you usually have to pay people off? Is that what you do out here?"

"Uh... Yeah, sometimes," said Simon. "I told you it might be dangerous." He was glad she was there, though. He didn't like going on expeditions alone, and as she'd said, he'd been helping with so much of her research that it was only fair she help him with his.

He could still barely believe they were going to be married in a few months. It was the kind of thing that only happened to people who didn't wake up at their desks with pieces of partially translated printer paper stuck to their cheeks. He deserved one of those stereotypical nagging wives from stand-up routines, not someone like her.

They set up camp in a small clearing near a decrepit farmhouse. Betty checked the interior, but she said it was only inhabited by rats now. They couldn't stay inside, though. As outsiders, it would take months for the house to truly accept them, and they would not be here for months.

Later, as Simon transcribed an old novella and Betty drew detailed diagrams of the local flora in her notebook, Betty said "Do you feel like we're being watched?"

"Yeah, I do," said Simon, unconcerned. "It's probably just the gangs." He lowered his voice. "Don't tell them why we're really here, and everything will be... fine." Probably. There was always a bit of uncertainty.

Betty put the notebook down and leaned back, looking at the stars. There were more here than in the city, and Simon couldn't help associating it with the cold air. "Why are we really here, Simon?" she whispered. "All you ever say we're looking for is 'something' and 'it'."

"I do?" said Simon. It was hard to shake the habit of secrecy, even with his fiancee. He spoke as quietly as he could. "This area was a strike site in the Great Freezing War. It was supposed to be a new, special kind of bomb. All sources listed it as deployed, but there's no signs of a crater here." He indicated the area where the bomb should have landed, which was almost invisible in the dark. "Or any radiation." They hadn't brought a Geiger counter, but six hundred years of continuous habitation was a pretty good indicator that nothing had happened. "I think the bomb missed, but there must have been something up here." You didn't test your bombs on inhabited areas in foreign countries, and you didn't waste your special, one-of-a-kind bomb on boring stretches of farmland.

"Mmm." Betty sounded skeptical, but she'd never really acknowledged the importance of Simon's work. She was more interested in the way things were now, while Simon believed that the best way to understand the world was through the past. The ancients had had almost everything figured out, and if they could just recover that knowledge, there'd be no need to reinvent the fireplace.

For him, the way his career had started almost made it an obligation. As long as he could recover at least as much knowledge as he'd destroyed, he'd be happy.

.

They started out early the next morning. Simon began by mapping the contours of the hilly land, trying to find the lowest points, where the eroded signs of ancient civilisation would be most apparent. There didn't seem to be anyone around, but he didn't want to bring out the shovels during daylight hours if they could avoid it. If they didn't find anything by the afternoon, they'd have to risk it, for archaeology.

Betty was looking at the trees, obviously more interested in whatever they could tell her than finding the intended target of the strike. "Simon!" she called suddenly, from a stand of trees at the bottom of a hill. "I think you should see this!"

Simon ran over, and at first, he couldn't figure out what Betty wanted him to look at, until she pointed at the big space between the tree roots. "A cave..." There was probably something down there, unless it had already been picked clean by the locals.

"You first," said Betty, with a sweeping arm gesture.

Simon crawled between the roots, into a dim, cold cave that smelled of rot and sharpness.

Betty followed behind. "See anything?"

Simon waited for his eyes to adjust from the bright outdoor light. "Not yet..." There was something yellow, glinting in the light from the entrance. "Look!" He moved towards it cautiously.

"Stop..."

Simon hesitated and looked around, but he couldn't see the source of the voice, or if what he'd heard was a voice at all. He could just about see what the glint was coming from, though. There was a golden, jeweled crown, sitting on the head of a skeleton that had been caught under a large chunk of ice. The skeleton was wearing faded pre-freeze clothing, and was the size of a child or a young teenager. It wore a strange hat with two ear-like protusions sticking up from the top, which prevented Simon from judging its age at death through the fusion of its skull bones.

He didn't see the pink goo spread around the cavern floor until it squelched into a heap about as tall as he was. "Candy... Do you have any... candy?" Its voice had a tinny, bubbly quality, that made it sound like it was speaking through an ancient microphone from under a swamp.

Simon wasn't sure he'd heard it correctly. "Candy?" What was this thing? Some sort of pre-freeze relic, obviously, but he'd never heard of the ancients developing... pink goo golems or whatever.

"Candy!" the figure repeated. "I need sugar to metabolise... to metabolise my..." Talking was obviously an effort for it. It didn't even seem to have a mouth.

Betty tossed it a wrapped square of toffee. "Here."

Lucky for them that Betty had a sweet tooth. Whatever this thing was, it blew apart his wildest expectations. It represented potential lifetimes of research, and might even repay his debt to humankind all on its own.

They couldn't get too excited yet. Something could still go wrong.

The toffee landed on top of the goo heap and sank down, out of sight. After a second, the heap rippled violently, and differentiated into a more humanoid form, with a defined head, torso and limbs.

It had a flap of hair hanging down from the back of its head, and a distinct bump on its chest. It was probably supposed to be a woman, Simon thought. It was still hard to tell.

"Listen," said the pink, gooey woman, in a somewhat clearer voice. "Thanks for the candy, but you've got to leave, now. This place is... dangerous."

It was some sort of guard, then, that didn't know what had happened since its activation. From a financial standpoint, the most valuable thing in here seemed to be the crown, so that was probably what it was guarding. It looked like an ordinary crown, from very early in European history. It wasn't unknown for European items to end up on another continent like this, but why was a skeleton from just before the freeze wearing it? Maybe it was just a prop, or a costume? He bent over the skeleton to examine it more closely.

"Aren't you listening to me?" said the woman, so forcefully that Simon jerked back. "I said it's dangerous!"

"What are you?" said Betty. Simon could tell that she wanted to touch the woman and see what she was made of, but she held back.

The poorly defined lines on the woman's face shifted until she almost looked confused. "I... I don't remember." She shook her head violently. "That's not important. I remember what happened here."

Simon could almost feel his eyes light up. A skeleton from the Freezing War trapped under a chunk of ice, wearing what looked like a much older crown. There had to be an interesting story there. "Okay, what happened here?"

The woman indicated the skeleton. "This is..." She frowned. "He's... His name is... Finn. Finn Mertens. A thousand years ago, he saved the world from... that." She pointed at the ice.

"From ice?" said Simon. That was the opposite of what had happened.

"Simon, that's a bomb, said Betty impatiently. "It's just covered with ice."

Simon looked at it with his head on his side. Now that she mentioned it... "Oh yeah, you're right! It must have frozen in the Freezing War." Most of the ice had gone back to pre-freeze levels centuries ago, but there were still scattered pockets of frost around.

"Not... exactly," said the woman. "If that bomb had exploded, it would have destroyed the entire world. Finn had been cursed with the power to control ice and snow, so he set out to freeze it before it hit the ground."

"Control ice and snow?" said Betty, frowning at the skeleton.

"You mean, by magic?" said Simon. The story was obviously some sort of myth, probably one that the woman had created herself to explain the things in this cavern, but most myths had a kernel of truth to them.

"No, just through cryokinesis," said the woman, looking at him like he was the crazy one. "I said he was cursed because the power was janking up his brain. He succeeded in freezing the bomb, but... you can see what happened."

"He got trapped underneath," said Betty.

"Yeah," said the woman. She rubbed the crown gingerly. "The crown was really attached to Finn, mentally and emotionally. When he died, it unleashed so much cryogenic power that the whole earth got covered in ice for four hundred years."

Interesting. Simon wondered how close it was to the truth. Was the skeleton even of this Finn person, or did the name have other significance?

"That's how you think it happened?" said Betty. She had a lot of talents, but tact was not among them.

"It's the truth!" the woman insisted. "How do you think the world got covered in ice?"

"Well there's a lot of theories," said Simon, counting off on his fingers. "Changes in the planet's orbit, some kind of secret superweapon, reverse greenhouse gasses..." Those were the three most commonly accepted theories. He liked the greenhouse gas the one the most, because it was tidy. The planet had been getting hotter, so people had tried desperately to cool it back down, and succeeded too well. It made sense, and fit in with what was known of the politics of the time.

"Yes, it was a secret superweapon!" said the woman in exasperation. "The crown!"

She obviously believed what she was saying. They'd need to do some careful questioning to get the real truth. "Betty," said Simon. "This is big! We gotta get back and get an expedition together so we can study this place."

Betty nodded. "And hire some guards." She looked at the woman. "Do you want to come back with us? We could get you more candy."

"Thanks for offering, but no," the woman replied. "I have to stay here and guard this place, and you have to go home and never come back. I just got done telling you about how this crown nearly destroyed the world!"

The crown. Simon looked down at it, gleaming on the skeleton's head. They wouldn't have any trouble drumming up interest if they showed that off. And the longer they left it, the higher the chance that someone else would come along and take it, especially if they'd been seen entering the cave. Simon leaned over the skeleton and reached down.

"What did I just say?" the woman exploded. "Have you been listening to a word I've been saying? What did you say your name was? Simon?"

Simon picked the crown up, inspecting the skeleton's mouth as he did. It was missing a lot of teeth, but its wisdom teeth were still high above the gum line. So, a child or a teenager. "I know you think it's got magical powers, but we need to take this thing back to the city with us." The crown was surprisingly cold, even compared to the rest of the cave. It must have been closer to the ice than it looked.

"Put that down," said the woman, in a failed attempt to sound threatening. Her voice was just too distorted and weak.

"I'm sorry," said Simon. He put the crown in his bag so they wouldn't attract thieves on the way home.

"Yeah," said the woman. "I'm sorry too." She pulled an old, 3rd century gun from behind the frozen bomb. "I'm gonna count to three, and if you don't put down-"

Betty tackled her and wrestled the gun away. "Give me that!"

"You... You tried to..." Simon took a deep breath. She'd seemed so harmless and eccentric. She was still a guard, he reminded himself. Guards had to use force sometimes. Especially when they truly believed that the world would end if they didn't.

The woman picked herself up off the ground. Interestingly, she was so soft that the force of Betty's tackle had actually deformed her a bit. "Fine. Take the crown. Destroy the world all over again. But don't say I didn't warn you!"

"Let's get out of here," said Betty. She inspected the gun closely, pulled the trigger a couple of times, then dropped it. "This thing doesn't even work."

They crawled back out of the hole. There was just enough time to get back to the city before sundown, if they hurried.

.

The woman watched the two humans crawl out of the small opening that she really should have got around to filling, then sat next to the skeleton. "Sorry, Finn," she told it. "I couldn't stop them from taking the crown."

"You can't let them have it," said Finn.

The woman sighed. "Finn, quit talking. You're dead. This isn't real."

"Yeah, but you still have to stop them," said Finn. Without the crown, his head looked bald and incomplete. "You promised when the world froze over, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," said the woman softly. All her important memories were still with her. "It's nice to talk to you again, Finn."

"Oh, in that case," said Finn. He put on a spooky voice. "Oooo... Get the croooown... Get the croooooooooown... Get it back from those guuuuuuuys..."

"If I do it, will you quit talking that?" said the woman. She might be crazy enough to think a dead boy was talking to her, but she wasn't stupid. She knew what he was doing. What her brain pretended he was doing.

Finn lay on the ground and said nothing.

.

As they walked back to the camp, Simon imagined that he could feel the cold of the crown seeping through the bag, into his skin. He could definitely feel its weight. He'd handled gold a few times in the past, but the weight never stopped surprising him.

"Do you think-" Betty began.

Simon put a finger to his lips and mouthed "later". Once they were back on the road. He hoped the horse they'd hired could go faster than a trot. Rental horses were often not well treated.

Someone grabbed his ankles from behind, and he went down. "What-?" He tried to push himself up, to the sound of yells and running footsteps.

"You again?" said Betty.

Something hit Simon hard in the back of the head, and he slid face first over a rock, pulling off his glasses.

"Simon!" said Betty, over the thumps and groans of a fistfight.

Betty sounded like she had her hands full. Simon tried to get up to a kneeling position, and felt something crack under his foot.

"Oh... butt." It was his glasses. He put them on anyway - the right lense was still okay - and stood, tensing up for another attack.

The first thing he saw was Betty fighting a group of thugs in tacky clothing, including the one from the day before.

"Betty!" Simon ran forwards, and something hit him in the back, nearly knocking him down again. At first he thought someone had kicked him, until he recognised the tingle of a low level energy projectile.

Energy guns were hard to get out here. He turned.

"Morning," said his old partner, keeping his weapon trained on him. He looked a bit older than Simon remembered, but he still had that white coat and hat he always wore. His eyes hadn't changed, either.

"O'Malley," said Simon. He didn't move.

"O'Malley...?" said Betty. She seemed to have stopped fighting, but Simon didn't want to turn around to check. "Isn't he that... Didn't he go to jail?"

That was what Simon had thought as well.

O'Malley signaled the thugs, and said "Thing about jail is, eventually you get out of jail."

"Why are you talking like that?" said Simon. Like that was the most surprising thing that had happened today. He sounded like he was mimicking the way people spoke up here, but for all Simon knew, the eastern accent he'd had when he knew him was the fake one.

The poorly dressed thugs walked Betty into Simon's view. Simon couldn't tell if she'd lost, or just pretended to lose, but she looked all right. She didn't have any visible cuts or bruises on her, which was more than he could say for the man wearing a domino mask and what looked like an off the shoulder dress.

"Come to make more money off Simon's hard work?" said Betty, looking at O'Malley with an anger that Simon rarely saw from her. He'd never realised how strongly she felt about this. He'd caught onto O'Malley's scheme years before they'd even met.

"Sure, if he agree," said O'Malley, without taking his eyes off Simon. "For starters, he can hand over whatever he found in that hole. You know, show of good faith."

Oh. He'd seen that. "W-We didn't find anything," said Simon. "I thought there was something here, but I was mistaken. We were going home." He was so much better at lying by omission than just lying. Even to someone who'd lied to him so often and so easily.

The man with the burn scar snorted derisively.

"I never thought I would see the great Simon Petrikov wrong about anything," said O'Malley. "Mind if we look inside your bag?" He flashed a disarming smile, as though they really were just having a friendly talk.

Simon took a bit too long to come up with an answer. He wasn't a criminal, and he didn't know how to begin calculating the monetary value of the crown. But gold was always worth a lot.

"What?" said O'Malley. "We won't _murder_ you for it," he added with a chuckle. "Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Remember that?"

Simon did. They'd found an only slightly water damaged library once, and that story had been in the first book he'd opened. It was also one of the few books from that library that still existed, because he'd decided to take it home with him. He'd never really understood logistics, so he'd usually left the large-scale transportation to O'Malley.

"Do you remember the bird catcher and the viper?" muttered Betty.

"Quiet!" O'Malley snapped, his mask falling for a second. "I'm ta- I talk to your boyfriend. Butt out." He turned back to Simon. "How would you like to work together again? I take care of business side, and you do your research, just like old times. I bet whatever you have in that bag will pay the finder's fee, easy."

Simon looked over at Betty. Of course there was no way he was willingly going to set humanity back any further than he had already, but there was something wrong. O'Malley was too confident. He was always like that, but he wouldn't go to these lengths just to bluff without something up his sleeve.

"No?" said O'Malley. "Okay." He glanced at the thugs.

The man with the burn scar unslung his sword, but he didn't point it at Simon. He pointed it in the opposite direction, at Betty.

He really thought he could take her hostage? Simon began to think that maybe they'd get out of this.

Betty broke out of the men's grip and kicked backwards. "I've had enough of this!" She elbowed the man with the burn scar in the stomach and yanked the sword from his hand, before transferring her attention to the man in the domino mask, who'd taken a large hammer off his back.

Simon noticed O'Malley lining up a shot, and yelled "Betty, look out!"

Betty threw herself to the ground, and the shot went over her head, narrowly missing the thug in the domino mask. "Simon! Try to get that gun off him!"

That was easier said than done. Simon turned to face O'Malley, and O'Malley shot him in the stomach. Simon doubled over in pain, his eyes filled with tears.

"Simon!"

Simon couldn't see through the tears, but he recognised the voice. It was the pink, gooey woman from the cave.

"Uh..." The woman sounded confused. "Simon, I hope you still have the crown, because you need to put it back. Now."

"Crown, huh?" said O'Malley.

The vague shapes in front of Simon resolved into the sight of O'Malley holding his pistol to the pink woman's temple. "No!" Energy weapons became unreliable at high power, but seeing what Betty's tackle had done to her, even middling power would be enough.

"I don't know who you are, lady, but I bet you have lots of stories to tell, that nobody else will ever know. It would be a real blow to the sum total of human knowledge if you died right now."

"Don't..." Simon took the crown out his bag. It still felt cold, and he wondered if he was imagining it. How well did gold absorb heat, anyway? Betty probably knew.

He had to give up the crown. Betty could take care of herself, but unless he did something, the woman would definitely die. The thought of anyone dying because of him made him shudder, unique knowledge or no unique knowledge.

And it was just one artifact. It wasn't like he was actually agreeing to help O'Malley annihilate every trace of the pre-freeze world.

Except he was. He'd give away any amount of ancient treasures to save a life, especially a life like the strange goo woman's.

But what else could he do? He took a step forwards, then hesitated. The woman had claimed that the crown was a superweapon, and obviously that was an exaggeration, but it was strange that it had ended up on the head of a skeleton trapped under a bomb. Maybe there was some power to it. It was a stupid idea, but he didn't have any good ones left.

Most myths had a kernel of truth to them.

He held the crown above his head.

.

For a second, the pink woman thought Simon was going to give the crown to the white-clothed man holding her at gunpoint, but it was even worse than that. He lowered it onto himself.

"No!" yelled the woman, too late. "Stop!"

The crown touched Simon's head, and he began to scream. He collapsed to the ground, and coughed up what looked like snow, or possibly some sort of semi-frozen bodily fluid.

Despite what was happening, the woman was fascinated. So this was what happened when a human put the crown on for the first time. She'd asked Finn a couple of times, but he'd never been able to remember. If only she had... If she... What did she wish she had? Was this the kind of thing she was into? What was she?

"What in the junk...?" The man in the white coat lowered his gun and walked over to where Simon was lying. He knelt down, and reached for the crown.

Simon jerked backwards and into the air, his hair flapping like wings. "You!" he screamed, shooting ice from his hands. The man barely had time to stand up before he was frozen.

Betty glanced around. "Simon?" she said, as she pulled one of the other men to the ground by the hair. "What are you...?

Simon rotated to face her and shot more ice in her direction, freezing two of the men, and barely missing the third.

Wisely, the third man ran.

"Hey, I'm not done with you!" Simon yelled. "Come back here!" He created a frozen lightning bolt and flung it at the man. He missed, but the ground shook with the impact. He threw another one.

He reminded the woman more of Finn with each passing second.

"Finn!" she said aloud. The third thug was running right towards the cavern. She didn't think she had the energy to dig Finn out if the cavern collapsed, without at least enough candy to remember her name. "Be careful!" she called.

Simon didn't seem to hear.

The woman began to run, putting the last of her energy into moving as fast as she could, even as her legs began to melt and lose definition.

"Hey- wait!" Betty chased her. "What's happening? What's wrong with Simon? He's just messing around, right?"

The woman tried to answer, but her tongue had melded with the roof of her mouth. What kind of a stupid question was that? She'd seen him put the crown on. What did she think was wrong with him?

She reached the cavern and dove inside. Finn was still okay. Apart from being dead and a skeleton and missing the crown. He wasn't buried. Yet.

Betty crawled in and said "Wait! You have to tell me how to help Simon!"

The woman managed to unstick her tongue. "If I knew that, Finn wouldn't be stuck under that bomb," she snapped. Everything would have been fine if these two hadn't shown up and brought all their outside world problems with them.

The whole cavern rumbled from the impact of another lightning bolt, and a crack formed in the ice encasing the bomb.

"That... That bomb's dead, right?" said Betty nervously.

The woman shrugged. "I never got the chance to do any tests on it." She'd never had both enough sugar to function and the equipment to conduct any serious experiments. She didn't even know how long a normal atomic warhead lasted, and the bomb was unique.

Betty backed towards the exit. "Maybe we should-"

Another impact shook the cavern.

.

Gunter was jerked out of sleep by a loud explosion. "Argh! What?"

On the screen, Simon was wearing Finn-Ice's crown and hovering in the sky. Behind him, a horrible green mushroom cloud spread across the sky. Simon looked around, saw the cloud, and said "Oh Grob!"

He dove at the ground, and a thick, protective layer of ice formed around his body.

"What is this?" said Gunter. "This wasn't happening when I went to sleep!"

"It's your friend's wish," said Prismo. "Wait. You were asleep?"

"I... I was tired!" said Gunter. "I'm running on two hours of sleep here!" They'd spent most of the night collecting gems for Billy. For the Lich. Tricking them and wearing Billy's skin as a coat was horrible enough, but depriving him of a full night's sleep was salt on their wounds. "I'm fairly certain that Simon didn't wish to become the prince of ice and re-enact the Great Mushroom War!"

"Well... no, he didn't," said Prismo. "We're seeing the _consequences_ of his wish. Sometimes this is what just happens."

"Ooh," said Gunter. As long as there was no Lich and never had been, it was still in the bounds of what Simon had asked for. "Maybe a king?" he said to himself. "S- He looks old enough to be a king..." He wasn't sure what the distinction was. Marceline had a kingdom, and she was a queen, but so did Finn-Ice, and he was just a prince. It was confusing. Did it depend on the amount of thinking subjects, maybe?

On the screen, Simon broke open the ice and surveyed the area. He was breathing hard, and there was something crazed about his expression.

"But you know..." said Prismo. "You get a wish too."

"I do?" said Gunter. Oh yeah! He did! This was so exciting. All life wasn't extinct, and he got a wish of his own! "Then I wish for... yeah, I wish for a smoothie." He was getting hungry. Last night's dinner seemed like weeks ago.

"A smoothie?" repeated Prismo. "You're gonna waste your one wish on a smoothie?"

"Yeah, with a little honey, and banana, oh, and some fish, of course," said Gunter. He was easy to please. He could have wished for something like a good life fo his unhatched chicks, or the ability to fly, but he didn't want to accidentally make any more bombs go off. Simon was literally a genius, if they could believe the IQ test they'd dug up a few years ago, and his wish had still got him insanity and explosions.

"You don't want anything else...?" said Prismo, looking at the screen.

Gunter looked at the screen too. Simon was sitting with his head in his hands. He was still wearing the crown. "Yeah, just a smoothie." Or maybe two, but he didn't want to get greedy.

"Dude," said Prismo. "I'll just make you a smoothie. You should use your wish on something important."

"What's not important about smoothies?" said Gunter. He could just taste that refreshing, fishy taste already.

Prismo looked at the screen again, and when Gunter didn't say anything, added "You know. On someone who might need it...?"

Gunter couldn't think of anyone who _needed_ it. Maybe he could wish for peace on Uuu, but then they wouldn't have any more adventures.

"I'm talking about him!" Prismo burst out. He pointed at Simon. "Over there."

"Oh," said Gunter softly.

.

Simon returned to the town. He couldn't think of anywhere else to go. He could barely think at all. People were going to be upset about the bomb exploding their nice farmland. Maybe nobody had noticed yet. He could blame it on... someone. Not him. Whoever had put the bomb there in the first place. It was an obvious occupational health and safety hazard. Didn't anyone read ancient corporate pamphlets anymore?

He'd started seeing visions as soon as he'd put the crown on, and they hadn't gone away. They were everywhere. He charged up some ice and shot at a cluster of strange, multicoloured... things. "Leave me alone!" he yelled. Something slimy-looking climbed up his leg, though he couldn't feel it. He shook it off. "Go! Go, get outta here!"

The town looked a bit different to the way it had earlier in the day. He thought. He could barely remember. He didn't think all the trailers and stalls had been flat like that before. The whole thing had definitely been a lot more... intact.

He walked through a tall blue creature that resembled a stick with four legs jutting out of the bottom. He barely noticed.

"You're not real," he whispered at the town. It was the crown. It was fogging up his mind and making him see things that weren't real, like monsters and bombs and ruined towns.

He reached up, hesitated, and took it off.

At first there was no change, but then the monsters disappeared, and his mind came back into focus. He waited for the town and the sky to go back to normal, but it didn't.

He peeked into the nearest trailer, which was easy because the near wall was blown in, and stumbled backwards, barely preventing himself from throwing up. The people in there were already dead, he hoped.

The monsters weren't real, but the bomb was. It definitely was. It was real and he'd set it off. What had he even been trying to do? The memory was already fading, like a horrible dream.

Simon held the crown in his hands, and wondered if its mind dampening effects would work on what he'd seen in the trailer. He also wondered if he could survive without wearing it. He felt like it was telling that he couldn't, like it was whispering to him just below his hearing.

He held it up to his ear, then put it back on, and forgot what he was doing.

.

Prismo hit the mute button, and said "Looks like your friend's having a pretty rough time."

Gunter took a sip of the smoothie Prismo had made him. "Yeah, but he'll get out of it." He always did. "Any world's better than one with the Lich. And look at him! He's all grown up. He'll be fine, I can tell you that." He took another sip. "Hey. There fresh anchovies in this?" They tasted different to the canned ones.

Prismo laughed nervously. "I've never made a fish smoothie before. I figured, penguins, anchovies..."

"No, it's okay," said Gunter. "I love it. It's really hard to get anchovies where I live, the water's too cold for them. I mean, yeah, you could hike down to the south and catch them by the bucketload, but it's not very convenient, having to go through the Desert of Doom... You're a good host, Prismo. It can't be easy, with people coming in asking for wishes at all hours..."

"Actually it doesn't happen very often," said Prismo. "I mean, in your world, you have to... what? Find all nine gems of power, and the Enchiridion... sounds like a hassle."

"Yeah yeah, but didn't you say there was another human boy in here at the same time as me and Simon?" said Gunter. If the timelines were infinite, and every possibility was happening at the same time the way Simon kept telling him, he didn't see how Prismo ever got any rest.

Prismo avoided his eyes. "Oh, there were a lot of human teenagers in here. But they're all gone now."

"You're not telling me something," said Gunter, jabbing a flipper at Prismo. "They all brought their brothers with them too, didn't they?" Simon had said that the human boy who'd told Prismo about Billy was another version of him, so it stood to reason that he'd come in with another Gunter. Prismo hadn't said anything about how many penguins were in the room.

"And sisters," said Prismo. He counted on his fingers. "Cats, dogs, rats, flames, polar bears... You know. The works."

"And you're hosting all of them in your time room," said Gunter. "Impressive, very impressive. I couldn't do it." Especially not if Simon was home. They kept away from the Fire Kingdom for a reason. The others he could probably handle, as long as they alerted him to any special dietary requirements beforehand.

"Listen, Gunter, thanks for being cool about this," said Prismo. "Most singular beings are weirded out when they find out about it all. It's like-" He put on a high pitched voice "-'you're talking to how many other people? Are you even paying attention to me? I'm out of here.' You know, it's not really easy to meet many people in my line of work."

Gunter gulped down more smoothie. "Well, it's not like you can help it, is it? If they wanted to talk to you alone, they shouldn't have shown up at the same time as a thousand other blokes."

Prismo nodded thoughtfully.

.

Simon remembered the dead people ten minutes later, as he floated around trying to freeze as many of the green clouds as he could. He also remembered the thugs he'd frozen. No, the thugs he'd preserved. They were still alive, the crown could tell. So was that other guy. P... His name had started with P. Or maybe some other letter. They'd had some sort of quarrel, but whatever it had been, it didn't matter anymore. Nothing did.

He found the two thugs, frozen in running positions, and sat on the chunk of ice, trying to think how to free them. He could blow it up, but that would kill them. He had to get them out in some way that wouldn't render preserving them pointless.

He picked a rock up from the ground, and hacked at the ice with it until the man with the burn scar fell out. He left his head for last, so that he wasn't squirm or make Simon injure him. Simon was a conservationist. He'd seen that word in a couple of old books. Conservationist. It sounded good on him.

Simon smashed the ice encasing the man's head. "Hey! You! Get out of here, quick! No one can survive out here!" Except him, but he had the crown.

Burn scar frowned at him. "You're that treasure hunter from the city! You did this!" He looked around and saw the other thug, still frozen. He grabbed the rock off Simon and used to expertly crack the ice. "Trami! Let's get out of here! We gotta tell the boss about this!"

"Huh?" said the man in the domino mask. He looked around. "What happened? Tromo, get me out of this!"

Tromo tugged him out of the ice, and they ran away as fast as they could.

"Yeah, that's right!" said Simon. "Get outta here!" They'd be okay, he hoped. Gang life was already about as hard as end-of-the-world life.

He found the ice containing O'Malley a few feet away. There was something very satisfying about his shocked expression, but Simon couldn't remember what it was.

Remembering how Tromo or Trami had used the rock, he formed a giant chunk of ice out of the air, and brought it down on the ice on the ground. The crown assured him that it would work, unless it was just the echoes of the thoughts he didn't remember having. He couldn't tell anymore.

The ice cracked from top to bottom, and fell into two almost equal halves, with O'Malley at the centre. He stirred. "Huh? What did you do _this_ time?"

"Do? I just saved you! I protected you from the bomb!" Simon gestured at the area where the bomb had been. "And I got you out of the ice."

O'Malley narrowed his eyes for a second, then said. "If I remember right, you're the one who froze me in the first place. In fact, I bet you're the one who set that bomb off. You did, didn't you?"

"I... I don't know," Simon admitted. He grabbed his head. "Why can't I remember?!" He didn't want to destroy the world. He just wanted to... freeze it.

O'Malley shook his head solemnly. "I always figured something like this would happen. You always knew how to make things worse. If you'd just handed over the crown like I told you, none of this would have happened. What did you think you were going to do with it?"

He was right, but he was wrong, and Simon couldn't remember why. He didn't want to think about this now. He wanted to preserve everyone. In ice. He should freeze everything, in case there were more bombs. The crown agreed. But then there'd be no one to talk to. Except for the crown and the visions.

Maybe eternal loneliness would be worth it, if nobody would steal and smash and melt down anything ever again. Everything would just exist, forever. The way it should.

He had to freeze the world.

"You're not even listening to me, are you?" said O'Malley. "That's okay. I'd be torn up too if I'd killed my girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" repeated Simon blankly. That sounded vaguely familiar. "Betty!" His fiancee! How could he have forgotten? His last memory of her was her running away. Not from him. She was following that pink woman. Following her towards the bomb.

But she wasn't dead. He couldn't accept that. She'd found shelter, and she was fine. He just had to find her.

"It's okay, don't worry," said O'Malley soothingly. Simon glanced around sharply. He'd forgotten that he was there. "You can still make it right. Just give me that crown like you should have done in the first place. Then..." He looked searchingly into Simon's eyes. "Then the bomb won't have exploded, you see?"

Simon put both hands on the crown. "My... crown?" he said. Everything would go back to normal? If he just undid his mistake? That was what he wanted more than anything.

No. It wasn't. He wanted to preserve the world, and for that he needed his crown. He was the only one he could trust to do this right.

But first he had to find Betty.

He ran towards the bomb site, barely hearing the yells from behind.

.

Gunter relaxed in the warm water of the spa. "Couldn't you just put the TV on the opposite side of the bed?" he suggested. "Then you can watch TV it getting up." He wasn't completely sure where this bedroom Prismo was talking about was. He lived in a single room cube. It was probably in one of those many alternate dimensions.

"What, and ruin the feng shui?" said Prismo. "You don't even wanna know how bad my luck's been lately. It's the equivalent of walking under thirteen ladders."

"Hm..." Gunter put a flipper to his beak. Feng shui was fake, but he didn't want to bring that up an almighty wish-granting being from outside time. "T... TV ceiling?"

Prismo looked up. "That could work. I'll get a quote from-"

"Hello, hello!"

Gunter looked up to see the Cosmic Owl of all people enter the room, holding a couple of board games under one wing.

"Hey, so I brought over the-" the Cosmic Owl noticed Gunter, and gasped. "What is this singular doing in this realm?"

Gunter pulled at a stomach feather to make sure he wasn't having a very long, prophetic dream. It hurt, so it seemed that he was awake this time.

"He's just here making a wish, Cosmic Owl," said Prismo.

Oh yeah, that was what he was there for. Gunter had nearly forgotten. He glanced at the screen, but Simon was just running towards something. He was still wearing the crown, though. Gunter wished he'd take it off. Did he want to lose his mind and start kidnapping dogs? Or... books, maybe? Whatever thing tragically ran away when he first put it on.

"But I brought games!" said the Comic Owl. He sounded disappointed. "We were gonna hang..."

"After," said Prismo firmly. "Come on, get in here."

"Okay." The Cosmic Owl flapped down to join them in the hot tub.

Gunter held out a flipper, and said "Er, hello. I'm-"

"Gunter the Penguin," said the Cosmic Owl, gripping it with it with his wing and shaking it. "I know who you are."

"Cosmic Owl knows _everyone_," said Prismo. "It's like, his job."

Gunter thought about all the people in all the alternate versions of this room. "That's a lot of people," he said.

"Yeah," said Prismo, taking another sip from his mug. His projection was under the water, but it didn't seem to bother him, or affect whatever was in the mug. "Me, I can't even keep track of my ex-girlfriends. Cosmic Owl is a social genius."

"Oh, stop it, guys," said the Cosmic Owl, putting his head in his wing. He turned away and pretended to be fascinated by the floor. "Hey, did you know you left the remote down here?" He tried to pick it up, but he just flipped it over. "Oops." He fumbled it with both wings until he finally lifted it above the hot tub. "Got it."

"No... No, not again..."

The voice was so hoarse that Gunter almost didn't recognise it as Simon's. He looked around at the screen to see the volume up and Simon still wearing the crown. Simon was kneeling at the edge of a bubbling green pool that reminded Gunter of the Lich's well of power, trying to pull out the human woman who looked like Betty. Further from the edge, something pink slowly sank under the surface.

"Simon?" said Gunter.

"I'm sorry, Gunter," said Simon. He pulled Betty out of the liquid, sobbing. "This is the only way to protect everything."

"Me?" said Gunter, looking around. He couldn't see anyone else in the frame, penguin or otherwise.

If Betty was a human in the wish world, did that mean he was as well?

Simon held Betty close. "It's okay. It... It's okay. I'll just go freeze the world, and..." He gave a laugh that Gunter had never heard from him before. "And we can live forever! We'll live in a big castle made of ice, and... and... I'll the be king, and you'll be the princess. Sounds great, right?" Gunter could hear a bit of Finn-Ice in the way Simon spoke, and it scared him.

Betty began to stir. "Simon...? Is that you?"

Simon didn't seem to notice that she'd woken up. He hugged her harder.

"Simon, what happened?" said Betty. "What-" Suddenly she growled and pushed him away.

Simon fell back. "Gunter!"

"I'm here!" said Gunter. He climbed out of the tub and pressed himself against the screen. "Simon, I'm right here!"

Betty struggled to stand up, then gave up and crawled. Her eyes looked different, somehow. Had they been that unsettling shade of green earlier in the wish? He'd thought he'd seen eyes like that before, but it wasn't on Betty. Where was it?

"K... Keep away from me, Gunter," said Simon, backing away. "Don't come any closer! I command you!"

"Are you talking to Betty?" said Gunter. "I'm Gunter! She's Betty! Remember?" Of course Simon couldn't hear him.

Betty stood up unsteadily, and suddenly she was huge and her head was the Lich's head and Simon was flying into the air with ice magic around his hands and the picture cut out into static.

Prismo slid over the wall of the tub. "Maybe now you'd like to use your wish?"

Gunter nodded frantically. "Yeah, yeah yeah! I wish Simon was okay and Betty wasn't the Lich and Simon wasn't Finn-Ice and-"

"Wait!" Prismo interrupted. "Dude, look, I like you, so you should know my wishes always got an ironic twist to them. It's like a Monkey's Paw kind of thing."

"Monkey's Paw?" said Gunter. What did monkeys have to do with anything?

"You just gotta be really specific," continued Prismo. "Say your wish is 'I wish for a backrub.' Who's gonna give it to you? A dirty man? A bear?"

Gunter didn't see the problem. Bears gave great backrubs, as long as you were their size.

"And where does this masseuse come from?" Prismo continued. "Do I zap some guy away from his family dinner? Leave some kid traumatised?"

Gunter couldn't see an upside to that one. He twiddled his flippers, and the Cosmic Owl hooted softly.

Prismo put on some voices. "'Mom, where did dad go?' 'I don't know, son, he just disappeared from the table. Sorry.'"

Gunter tried to imagine being responsible for something like that. Then he tried to imagine Simon's wish resulting in something like that, and hoped that if it had, Simon never found out. It would probably destroy the poor kid.

"You see, Gunter, there's rules to this stuff," Prismo sounded upset himself now. "Wishing an event to be changes elements before and after it, memories will be destroyed, babies will not be born, potential worlds could be evaporated by. Your. Wish."

And Gunter had to decide all that? Sometimes he didn't even think he was ready for parenthood. He had to get out of there. He looked up at the exit and tried tp calculate how many clones he'd need to get up there.

He looked back at the static on the screen, and wondered if Simon was even still alive.

He wasn't thinking straight. He couldn't just abandon his best friend. "Okay," he said. "I'll just... okay. I can do it. I can make a wish."

Prismo looked at him expectantly.

Gunter tried to think what Simon would wish for, once he saw how his first wish turned out. His alternate self's wish for the Lich to disappear had been a good one, so what had gone wrong? Some sort of... butterfly, probably. They went around changing things in unpredictable ways whenever you went back in time. Butterflies were jerks. Turning Betty into a human and making Simon wear cursed crowns.

There were more butterflies the further back you changed things. That was how it worked in Football's video games, and it made sense for it to work that way in real life. Gunter vaguely remembered Simon telling him that the Lich had existed either since the Great Mushroom War, or since the beginning of time. That was a lot of time for butterflies to change things.

You didn't normally go back a thousand years to fix something that had happened five minutes ago, but Simon must have had some sort of reason. Unless Gunter could understand what that reason was, he couldn't fix the wish, and he had no hope of ever figuring that out. Simon was the smart one, not him.

Gunter pressed his flippers to his head. He couldn't fix Simon's wish, but he couldn't just go home and pretend nothing had happened. He wasn't sure there was even a home to go to anymore. He'd just have to make the best wish he could, and hope that it didn't attract too many butterflies.

Could he even make things any worse for Simon than they already were?

"How about," he began. "How about, I wish for the Lich to just pop out of existence, right before he makes his wish?" That was as late in the timeline as he could get it.

Prismo rubbed his chin. "Okay, okay, but what happens to you and your friend? What do you use your wishes on?"

"Oh," said Gunter. "Er..." Simon might make another bad wish before Gunter could stop him. Or Gunter might make a bad wish. He wasn't clear on whether he'd remember this. He hoped so. He liked Prismo. "Okay, instead of making a wish... the Lich grabs... No, he does make a wish. He wishes for us to go back home." He couldn't destroy all life if he'd already used his wish up.

Prismo looked thoughtful. "That could work. Is that your wish?"

Gunter nodded, feeling more confident by the second. "Yeah! I wish that the Lich's wish was for me and Simon to go back home." And not to wherever Ice Simon lived. "To Uuu."

"I can work with that," said Prismo. "All right. This has been nice." He hesitated. "See you."

The room faded away.

.

Gunter smacked into a rock, and his clones lost their grip and fell into the void.

"Gunter, quick!" said Simon, pointing at the Lich, which was already climbing into the yellow cube. "It's heading for Prismo's time room!" He was pretty sure that was what that thing was. He wondered what the Lich wanted with an almighty being, and none of the possibilities he came up with were good.

"Huh?" said Gunter. He shook his head violently. "Oh, right! Come on!" He grew, picked up Simon, and rushed to the cube.

They got to the entrance to see the Lich standing in front of the almighty Prismo, laughing.

The Lich composed itself and said "I wish for the extinction of all lif-" It seemed to have some kind of seizure. Possibly a result of its possession of Billy. "-For Simon and Gunter to go back home to Uuu."

Simon furrowed his brow. Why would its change its mind like that? The Lich could execute its plans better if they weren't around to stop him, but its original wish was more the Lich's style. Did it get unlimited wishes, or...?

The Lich gasped. "No, wait! That's not what I wish for-"

Prismo cut it off. "Sorry guy. You only get one wish." He looked up at Simon and Gunter. "Hey Gunter. Did you see that? Monkey's paw."

Simon and Gunter fell to the frosty ground back outside the Monster Kingdom, right where they'd left. There was no sign of the portal.

"What?" said Simon. He sat up and rubbed his head. "Why did he say that? Why did Prismo say that? Do you know him? What happened?"

"Nothing!" said Gunter joyously. "Nothing happened at all!" He grew to Simon's size and hugged him hard.

Simon let him hug him, despite his confusion. "Gunter, what are you doing? You're acting like you haven't seen-" Then it hit him. "We already went in there once, didn't we? Did I make a wish?"

Gunter nodded happily. "It was horrible, but I saved you. I saved everyone!"

He didn't seem to want to let go any time soon, so Simon stood up with some difficulty. He'd have to spend more planning time on scenarios like this, if he'd messed up his wish that badly.

Simon didn't see the jewels in the grass until they began to vibrate and rise into the air. They shot off in different directions. Back to their owners, he hoped. They'd have to go check on them in the morning, and apologise and do some community service. He didn't know what most of the jewels did, but he was a bit worried that Finn-Ice couldn't live long without his. Some time away from the power of the crown would probably be good for him, but... They'd also need to make sure Marceline was okay.

Something bright flashed at the corner of Simon's vision. He turned. "What was that?"

Gunter jumped off him to look. "Anchovies!" he said, holding up a pile of plastic bags and ice that hadn't been on the ground a minute ago. "He gave me fresh anchovies! Thanks, Prismo!"

It sounded like Gunter had really endeared himself to Prismo during... whatever.

Gunter read the note that had come with the fish, and frowned. "He's a nice guy, that Prismo, but he's, he's a tad clingy."

Simon couldn't help feeling like he'd missed out on something, but as long as all life wasn't extinct, he couldn't complain too much.


	5. War Temple

Simon was almost halfway down the cliff to Betty's bay when the wind picked up and sprayed him with icy droplets. He tightened his grip on the rope. "Looks cold down there..." The ocean off the north coast rarely looked inviting, especially at this time of year. But if he wanted to see his girlfriend before spring, he had no other choice.

He looked out at the open ocean, where the waves were smashing chunks of ice together like they were styrofoam. He told himself that the ice had probably broken off the Ice Kingdom, which was frozen even in summer, but he definitely saw more of it in winter. Some of it had probably formed naturally.

There was a gurgling voice from below. Betty had poked her head out of the water, and was trying to say something.

"What?" called Simon. She exhaled water when she spoke, making her sound more like a fountain than a person above the surface. Simon was hard to understand below the surface, unless he'd taken a waterbreathing potion.

Betty beckoned him in and calmed the waves.

Simon grit his teeth, and lowered himself down the cliff. He was wearing a wetsuit under his clothes, and the cold of the spray hadn't really got into his skin, but he didn't have anything to cover his face. When he was a couple of feet above the surface, he let go and splashed down.

The shock of the freezing water knocked the air out of him, and he leaned on a kelpy rock as he got his breathing under control.

Betty watched him, suppressing a smile. Simon scowled. It was okay for her. She had some sort of natural insulation to keep her warm, like an invisible layer of blubber or something. Not that he'd ever ask her about something like that.

"What did you say?" he said when he could breathe again.

They both sank under the surface so that Betty could reply coherently.

"I _said_, you've been staring at the water for half an hour. Are you ever gonna jump in?"

Simon surfaced. "What? Half an hour?" He did tend to lose track of time. "I'm sorry, Betty, I-"

He realised that she was trying not to laugh.

"It wasn't half an hour," he said.

"You're so serious, Simon," said Betty, when they got back under the surface. She waved a bandaged hand. "Why don't you grow a sense of humour?"

She turned and swam towards her house, which they'd built to partially stick out of the water, even at high tide.

"I have a sense of humour!" Simon protested, following her. He just didn't treat everything like a joke. sometimes he wanted to, but he wasn't a little kid anymore. Silliness was unbecoming of a hero.

It was warmer and calmer inside. Betty had attached what looked like heating elements to the walls. None of them were above the surface, which lapped at the point where the walls met the peaked roof, but they still looked like enough of a fire hazard to make Simon nervous.

Betty stopped swimming, and Simon beckoned her to the surface. "Betty," he said. "What happened to your hand?" Had she been attacked by something? What could possibly hurt her enough to make her bandage her hand like that?

Unexpectedly, Betty grinned. "Come on, I'll show you!" She grabbed his arm with her good hand and pulled him into a side room with cabinets strewn around the floor, seemingly at random. She picked up a battery with a couple of wires attached. The wires had small bits of metal on their ends. "Recognise this?"

"A..." Simon tried to remember the word. "An electrolysis device? Did you find some old coins?" Electrolysis separated substances at the atomic level, making it useful for removing the tarnish from ancient metal objects. Simon had told her all about the implications during their last date under Iceberg Lake.

"No, but look what happens when you do it without anything attached!" said Betty. She hung the wires over a stand, and turned the battery on.

The water around the ends of the wires began to bubble. Before the bubbles could reach the surface, Betty used her powers to combine them into two.

"Whoa..." said Simon, staring. "It's... green." One of them was green. The other was clear, as far as he could tell.

"Which element do you think they are, Simon?" said Betty, watching the bubbles grow from the metal pieces. "Hey. Do you have a lighter?"

"No..." said Simon. Betty knew how he felt about fire. What did she need a lighter for anywhere? She lived underwater.

"I wanna see if they're flammable," said Betty casually.

Simon hoped they could figure out what they were without having to set them on fire. "Well, there aren't many green gasses." Pity he couldn't remember which ones were. He'd memorised the periodic table a while ago, but it didn't have colour information on it, or much practical information at all. "Fluorine...?" Toothpaste was usually green or blue, and there was fluorine in toothpaste. Or sometimes it was white. "Is that how you hurt your hand?" Mermaids didn't have much experience with fire, as a rule.

"It wasn't the gasses." Betty turned off the machine, took some corked flasks from one of the cabinet, and wafted the green gas into one and the clear gas into the other. "You see how the water's all cloudy now?"

"Oh yeah!" He'd thought it was just the turbulence. The cloudy water was trying to spread out and mingle, but Betty wasn't letting it.

"I could tell it wasn't seawater," said Betty, "so I stuck my hand in it!" She rubbed her bandaged hand thoughtfully. "I think it's some kind of acid." She directed the cloudy water into another flask, which she put away with a smile. "It really hurt."

Simon had to think before he spoke next. Maybe she was in shock? How long did shock last? In mermaids? "You seem... happy."

"Of course I'm happy!" said Betty, agitating the water in her excitement. "I never hurt myself so bad before!"

Simon swallowed to make his ears pop. He wasn't sure if he'd heard right. The transmission of sound through water was still a grey area to him. "Uhh..."

"You don't understand, Simon," said Betty. "Dad never _let_ me hurt myself so bad before. How am I supposed to learn _anything_ if I can't sometimes mash it up?"

Simon still didn't really get it. "You _want_ to make mistakes?"

"Yeah!" said Betty. "If dad ever heard about this, he'd- Oh, he probably already knows." She sighed and sank to the bottom of the room, with her chin on her hands.

Simon waited for her to resurface. After a minute or two, she did.

"Why?" said Simon. "Did you tell someone?" Betty didn't have many friends, and all of them were back at the Ocean Kingdom. He felt bad for her. He probably would have been happy about something crazy like accidentally hurting himself too, if he'd had her sheltered childhood.

"No, but he has people keeping an eye on me," said Betty. She gestured at the empty room.

The water was a bit silty and hard to see through, but as far as Simon could tell, they were alone. "Where?"

"The plankton, Simon!" said Betty impatiently. "Ever looked at seawater under a microscope?"

Simon shook his head. He didn't own a microscope. Bonnibel did, but she didn't often let him use it. "Microscopic creatures? Can they..." He remembered the invisible plankton and lowered his voice. "Can they even think?"

"They can report back to my father," said Betty bitterly. "Hey. You said you always wanted to be an adventurer. Did your parents give you trouble about it?"

"Uh..." said Simon, surprised by the question. "Mom was _kinda_ overprotective." Less than Betty's dad, he was sure. "Dad always encouraged me, he was way into adventuring. He even took me through some dungeons." He hesistated. "He didn't tell mom until later." That was not a good memory for him. He couldn't have known that she was so against young children completing dungeons, but he still felt bad for upsetting her.

"And... your mom knew you could handle it after that?" Betty pressed.

"I guess so, yeah," said Simon. He saw what Betty was getting at, but he hadn't started adventuring seriously until after his parents' deaths.

"That's perfect!" said Betty. "Simon, let's go through a dungeon and prove to my dad I can handle danger! Then maybe he'll stop _spying_ on me. I know just the place."

"An underwater dungeon?" said Simon stupidly. Of course it was underwater. She couldn't exactly read surface treasure hunting guides without going through the trouble to get them waterproofed.

"It's just past the ridge," said Betty. She grabbed his hand. "Come on!"

Simon didn't want to risk swimming on the surface in this weather, so he took ten minutes of his precious waterbreathing potion. Betty had told him the dungeon was five minutes away, and she always overestimated how fast Simon could move underwater.

The dungeon turned out to be in the nearby ancient ruined city. Betty said the crystalline seaweed that grew through in the area was a pest and made it hard to grow anything else, but Simon thought it was beautiful. You never saw see things like that on land.

They went down what had once been a main road, over a line of half-buried cars and trucks, and Simon wondered if the people driving them had realised they were about to die. There was no way to know for sure.

Betty turned down a side street, through some roofless houses, and up a hill. "Here it is!"

They'd come to a tall building that had sunk so far into the silt that it was hard to tell how big it really was. Judging by the small flecks of paint still clinging to the bricks, it had once been grey.

"Hey, I've heard of this!" said Simon. "I read about in the Good Dungeons Guide!" Compiled by some of Wizard City's top scryers, it was an indispensable periodical for adventurers of any class, or at least that was what it said on the .adventure newsgroup. Simon found that it was at least worth the subscription fee.

"What did it say?" said Betty, as they swam to the only visible entrance, a big hole about halfway up that looked like it had been made by something bursting out from the inside.

"It said it's rated for one adventurer," said Simon. "But since you're a beginner, I guess it's okay. Oh, and we need bombs. Bombs that work underwater." Good thing they knew that now and not after hours of fruitless searching.

"Oh!" said Betty happily. "I nearly forgot!" She dug through her bag. "When I burned my hand, I separated out the stuff that made the water cloudy. It was some kinda white... stuff. I melted it and electrolysed it, and I got this weird metal." She pulled out a plastic container containing small balls of metal, each of which was thinly coated in something transparent. She took one out, and the coating began to dissolve. "Watch this. And stand back."

Simon stood back. Betty threw one of the metal balls down the hill, and it fell with more force that it should have underwater. It hit the ground and exploded with a flash.

"Bombs," said Betty.

Simon adjusted his glasses and inspected the container more closely. "What kind of metal is that?"

Betty shrugged. "It's soft and it blows up underwater. In air it just tarnishes. Oh, and sometimes it catches fire."

Simon thought he'd let Betty handle the explosives.

They looked at each other, and swam inside through the hole, coming out into the slanted remains of what had once been an office. It was dim, but they could still see the silvery surface of the water, glimmering not far above their heads.

The potion hadn't worn off yet, but Simon swam upwards and took a breath. Betty thought the air in here was probably okay, but he didn't want to take unnecessary risks. Betty knew a lot about the sea, but she was still as new to the surface as Simon was to the ocean. Maybe more. Simon could at least swim in the ocean if he had to.

He took a few more breaths, and when he didn't seem to be dying, swam back down.

"So," said Betty. "So where do we start?"

Simon scanned the room. There were two way out of the room that he could see, but one was covered in thick rubble. "I guess we go through that door."

Betty looked up, and Simon followed her gaze.

There was a big hole in the roof. There seemed to be more dungeon beyond it, but it was too high to reach. "That must be a more advanced section," said Simon. "We'll have to raise the water level."

Betty grinned. "Okay." She pulled her arms back.

"Wait!" said Simon. He took a breath to say more, and coughed. Now the potion was wearing off. He swam for the surface, and Betty followed. "You can't just use magic! That's cheating!"

"Are you sure?" said Betty, sounding disappointed.

Simon nodded emphatically before he surfaced again. "The Good Dungeons Guide says this dungeon can be solved without magic. We need to find another way."

Betty stared up at the hole, which wasn't too far from the surface. "Then I'll give you a boost." She grabbed him around the waist.

"That's cheating too!" said Simon, as she hoisted him above the water. "It's... it's rated for one person!"

Betty dropped him without warning. "Then what can we do?"

"There... there must be a way to raise the water level further in," said Simon, spitting out seawater. "Listen, we can't just skip half the dungeon. That's not how dungeons work."

The headed for the door.

"Why not?" said Betty. "It's just a series of rooms." She tried to pull open the door. "Ugh, it's stuck." She tugged harder.

Simon braced his legs on the wall and pulled on the door handle as well. "It's not- not the- lawful-" The door finally gave way, and two sharp-toothed eels rushed at them. "Zounds!'

One of the eels went straight for his legs, so he kicked it away. The other used the distraction to try to sneak up behind him. Simon ducked, and used the momentum to grab his nunchucks from his belt and hit the eel with them. It recovered quickly, but not fast enough to stop Simon from grabbing it by the tail and bashing it against the wall.

It stopped moving after that. Simon looked around for the other eel, and found it floating a few feet away, just above an old computer. "Are you okay?" he asked Betty, more out of courtesy than concern. Betty could take care of herself.

"That was fun," said Betty. She started to go through the door, but Simon pulled her back.

"Always check for monsters before entering a new room," he quoted, pressing himself against the wall and looking around carefully. The next room was part of a caved in hallway. There was a passageway under the rubble that looked just big enough to fit a person, and a door on both walls. The door on the right had a prominent padlock. "It's clear."

"I coulda told you that," said Betty. She swam past him and pulled on the padlocked door experimentally. "I guess it's locked."

"Yeah," said Simon. "The key should be around here somewhere." Dungeons always gave you the keys for locks, even rogue and subterfuge dungeons.

Betty pulled on the door again. "Can't you just pick the lock? Is that cheating too?"

Simon looked more closely at the lock, though he could already guess its basic structure. There wasn't much variety, even across dungeons. "Yeah, actually. I mean, I could." Dungeon locks were pretty simple. "It's wrong to pick a lock in a dungeon where you can get the key."

"Like it's wrong to use magic to skip ahead?" said Betty. She didn't seem to be taking this very seriously.

"It is in dungeons," said Simon. That was just how dungeons were. He opened the opposite door into a small room full of cleaning supplies and stacked furniture. "Looks like a janitor's closest."

Betty pointed at the crowded desk in the closet. "Hey, a key." She grabbed it, took it back to the locked door, and jammed it in. "Come on! Get in there, you stupid key!"

Simon took her arm. "Stop it, you'll damage the lock. This key must be for something else." Or it was a red herring. Some dungeons had a lot of those.

"How many locks are there?" said Betty, frustrated.

Simon shrugged. "Come on, let's search the closet. Might be more loot in there."

As they looked under mops and sealed chemical containers, Betty said "Simon, explain to me why suddenly lockpicking is wrong."

"Heroes have to stay lawful," Simon explained. She was still new to this. A lot of adventuring concepts sounded ridiculous when you didn't know why they existed. "You could become a villain if you're not careful."

Betty threw a plastic bucket over her shoulder, and it floated away on the surface. "Come on. We know we're not evil."

"Yeah, but you gotta keep checking up on yourself and making sure," said Simon. He did it every day. "All the worst villains think they're really heroes. Uh, except the Lich, I guess." He thought about it for a second. "No, the Lich too!" Destroying all life probably was heroic from the point of view of a being that hated life.

Betty held up a rotted wooden box. "Hey. Is this loot?" She shook it. It rattled. "It won't open." She turned it around. "It's locked!" She tried the key, but it didn't fit. "Can you pick this one?"

"I just told you why I can't," said Simon, trying not to get annoyed. "You start picking locks when you don't have to, and you end up murdering peeps just for cutting ahead of you line."

Betty frowned. "Whatever you say, Simon."

They found a pair of padded leather greaves, which Simon put on, but the only other useful item in the closet seemed to be the box. It was a bit too big to take with them, so they left it where it was and moved on to the passageway under the rubble.

Betty looked through and said "There's a pool of air just on the other side. I think you can make it, Simon"

Simon took a deep breath, and swam through the opening. He thought he'd emerged into a long hallway until he surfaced and saw it completely blocked off by more rubble. "Oh..." The only way to go was down, into a pool so deep Simon couldn't see the bottom.

Betty popped up from under him and pulled him down so she they can talk. "That's a dead end down there. Let's just blow it up!" She indicated the rubble.

Simon looked for cracks in the rocks ahead of them, but there weren't any. "We can't, the bombs aren't strong enough."

"So we use more," said Betty impatiently. "I got hundreds of these things back home."

The idea was so foreign to Simon that at first he didn't understand what she meant. "No," he said eventually. "We can only use one bomb at a time, and one bomb won't clear it."

It was a good thing he'd come along. It wasn't about getting to the end. Dungeons weren't just a source of loot, they were a test of character.

He took fifteen minutes of water breathing, and they dove down.

"You should really just become magic, Simon," said Betty. When Simon looked confused, she added "So you won't have to take a potion to breathe underwater."

"Y-You can't just become magic!" Simon protested, although he knew she was teasing him.

"Yeah you can," said Betty. "Did you even read any of the history books you waterproofed me?"

Betty was pulling ahead of him, so Simon kicked his legs as hard as he could. He didn't want to hold her up. "Of course I did, I- Okay okay, it is possible to become magic." Most of the sentient population of Uuu had some sort of human ancestry by now. "But usually you just die instead!" Or go insane. Or go insane and then die. Magic was not something you messed around with.

"Hpmh, excuses," said Betty. It was getting dark, so she pulled out some glowing crystal seaweed in a jar and shone it below them. "At least you'd be a magical-" She glanced at the ground. "What's that?" She put the jar under her arm and scooped something shiny up in her good hand. "It's the key to that stupid box! And the door!" She held it up, and it glowed in the light of the seaweed.

"Hm..." said Simon. He inspected the key more closely. "I don't think it'll fit to the door. Uh, it could fit the box."

"You can tell that?" said Betty. "Come on, let's go try it!"

"It's too small to for the door lock," said Simon. That wasn't lockpicking, it was just common sense. Lockpicking wasn't an essential skill for an adventurer, although it was a useful one. "We better make sure we haven't missed anything down here before we go back."

Betty groaned theatrically, but sank down and sifted through the mud on the floor. "Simon, are you sure this is the best way to do things?"

Simon nodded and did the same, after checking that his breathing potion was in his pocket for easy access. "Have you ever heard of a book called Dungeon Crawling for the Lawful Good? It taught me everything I know about dungeons." He'd memorised every word, although he was glad it only applied to dungeons. Following all the rules all the time would be exhausting.

"I'm true neutral," Betty replied, as she dug up half a whiteboard.

"We should all try to be lawful good," said Simon. "You just need more experience. You'll see." Wasn't that what true neutral meant? Unaligned because you hadn't had a chance to shift to either side yet?

"Uh-huh." said Betty. She didn't sound convinced.

.

In the end, they stayed down in the hole for more than half an hour, until Simon was completely satisfied that they hadn't missed anything. Betty knew Simon could be a stick in the mud sometimes, but never for so long and so irritatingly. She couldn't figure him out sometimes. He'd be doing an hilarious impression of a chasm seaweed farmer, and five minutes later be more serious than an orca attack.

The small key she'd found turned out to not fit either of the locks, though Simon had found a bigger one that fit the locked door.

"Finally," said Betty, as the door swung open to reveal a seat of concrete stairs going up out of the water. "Hey, lemme try something."

"Okay..." said Simon, who was looking up the stairs and mumbling to himself. He was probably wondering how Betty could continue through the dungeon if it was full of air. But he didn't have to.

Betty pushed herself out of the water, keeping a protective bubble of water around her so that she could breathe. She swam to the first step poking out of the water. "Okay." She grunted with effort, and swam on to the step above, bringing as much water with her as she could.

She turned around to see Simon staring at her. "What?" said Betty. "Don't tell me this is against the rules too."

Simon shook his head. "No... No, it's great! The rules don't say anything about that. How are you doing it?"

Betty shrugged. "Magic. I'm just moving water around." She rolled the ball of water up a step, and couldn't stop some of it splashing back down.

"Should it be doing that?" said Simon. He leaned into the bubble so that he could hear Betty's reply, and tapped his fingers on the surface.

"Well... I can't stop it," said Betty. It was difficult to stay focused on all the water at once, and she couldn't control water with much precision if it wasn't connected to her. "It'll be fine. I just need to top it up sometimes. I have plenty."

Simon seemed fascinated by the edges of the bubble. "But won't you eventually run out of... good water?"

"Yeah, but it'll splash away faster," said Betty. It was possible to make bad water breathable again by stirring with the air a bit, but she wasn't confident enough in her ability to keep the bubble together. "Stop worrying, Simon, I can handle it."

"Oh, yeah," said Simon, like he was reminding himself. "You _can_ handle it. Then, let's go."

Betty got better at controlling the bubble with each step she splashed over. By the time they got to the next floor, she still had half her water left, which was more than she'd expected.

Going upwards in the air was hard work. Like waves on the surface, her bubble did not want to leave the ground. Betty was familiar with the concept of gravity, but she'd never had to fight it so hard before. No wonder surface dwellers could barely think in three dimensions.

There were more stairs, but they were blocked by rubble. Betty didn't even bother mentioning the bombs this time. Instead, they went up a collapsed section of wall and came to a large, dry room with a floor that slanted down to the right. At the bottom of the slope was a jumble of broken furniture, and on the opposite wall was a map with pins stuck on it.

Simon scanned the room mechanically, scooped a pile of silver coins off the floor, and started to move through, in the silly falling forward and catching himself way land bipeds had. Betty grabbed his arm. "Simon, look," she said, pointing at the map. It was the first interesting thing they'd come across, and she didn't think he'd even seen it.

"Huh?" Simon looked. "Oh! What is that?"

They got closer. "It's pre-war," said Betty. "Right?" Simon was better at history than she was, but it was common knowledge that the Great Mushroom War had shifted the continents somehow. It had also blown a big hole in the planet, which wasn't anywhere on the map she could see.

"Yeah..." said Simon. He pulled a pin out and put it back in. "I wonder what these were for."

"Isn't this were we are?" said Betty, pointing at the continent in the centre. The top half of that continent had no pins.

"Yeah!" said Simon. He pointed at one of the edges. "Right around there."

Betty tried to find Uuu in where he'd pointed, but all she could see was unfamiliar coastline.

Simon took a photograph of the map for later, and they were back to dungeon crawling.

Betty was surprised at how reluctant she was. The map was interesting. Dungeon crawling was... boring. Simon wasn't enjoying himself either, she could tell. He'd liked looking at the map, but now he was wearing his unfun serious face.

There was a creak so loud that Betty could feel the vibrations through her bubble, and Simon froze with one foot in front of the other. For a second, nothing moved, then the walls came alive with small land mammals. Rats or something. Betty wasn't an expert.

The rats rushed at them, Simon tensed and put a hand on his nunchucks, and Betty tried hard to care. Simon didn't seem too worried, so he could probably handle them on his own. If he looked like he was having trouble, she'd help, of course, but for the moment she just didn't care. She probably needed to conserve her water anyway. She was in the mood to crush things under fifty foot waves, and that wouldn't work up here.

Simon crouched as the rats approached, and punched apparently at random, knocking the closest rats against the opposite wall. A whole group leapt at him at once, but somehow he dodged every one of them. Several flew right past Betty's bubble.

Betty realised she was beginning to blush. She'd never seen Simon move like this before. He was... really good. At fighting. Lots of things at once. He didn't need her help at all.

Simon shook one last rat off his arm, smiling. He saw Betty's expression, and blushed a bit himself.

Betty laughed nervously, and beckoned him into the bubble. "Do you do that a lot?"

"It's the just I- Yes," Simon stumbled. "Agility is important. I... I keep in practice."

"How?" said Betty. His secret second job at the circus?

"Gunter," said Simon, gesturing upward. "You know, he can do that clone thing..."

"Oh," said Betty, with another awkward laugh. "Hey, we better get going." Even dungeon crawling was better than continuing this conversation.

Simon assumed his serious face. "I can't believe I trod on that board. If more than ten enemies attack at a time, you've done something wrong." He said it so tonelessly it sounded like a quote.

"Weren't you having fun?" said Betty. He'd looked like he was having fun.

"If more than ten enemies attack at a time, you've done something wrong," said Simon again, still looking serious. He turned to continue on, and Betty grabbed his shoulder.

"Simon. This is kinda... boring. I'm not having any fun." Enough was enough.

"Not having any fun?" repeated Simon. "Come on! Dungeons are all about fun!" He forced a smile. "That's what they're for!"

"Can't we do it some other way?" said Betty.

"What?" said Simon still wearing that fake smile. "No. We gotta follow the book, remember? We gotta be lawful."

"I'm not lawful," said Betty. And neither are you, she thought. She didn't say it out loud, though. It was rude to contradict people about their alignment. "Do you have a book about true neutral dungeon crawling?" Not that she needed one. She was true neutral because she wasn't particularly inclined to law, chaos, good or evil. It wasn't some standard she needed to live up to.

Although at this point chaos was beginning to look pretty good.

"Your alignment's gonna shift," said Simon, with so much certainty he obviously believed it. "Come on. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we can finish the dungeon." He turned and continued on.

Something towards the end of the room glinted in the dim light. It was a pocket of water. Betty rolled towards it, but Simon stuck out his arm and mouthed "Wait."

"What?" said Betty. He was the one who'd been worried about her breathing water.

"Some acids look just like water," said Simon. He knelt down, took a bottle marked 'baking soda' out of his bag, and sprinkled it in the water. It dissolved.

Betty sighed theatrically, though she knew he couldn't hear her yet. She grabbed his arm, waited for him to take a breath, and pulled him in. "Simon, I can tell when something isn't water. It's just normal seawater. Except now it's got... baking soda in it." Whatever that was.

"You have to test unknown liquids in dungeons!" said Simon, crossing his arms. "It's in the book!"

Betty rolled herself into the water pocket, wishing Simon would just forget about the book for a few minutes.

Maybe it was time to take matters into her own hands.

She let the water construct dissolve, and beckoned Simon in. "Simon," she said. "Don't you think you're taking this lawful thing a bit too far?"

"Too far?" said Simon. He laughed unconvincingly. "There's no such thing. I am lawful."

"Yeah," said Betty. "You told me. Why is it so important to you?" She surfaced and took off her glasses. They were nearly useless above water unless she let them dry out, and she wanted to see his face.

Simon looked like he was going to brush her concerns off again, but he said "Sometimes... I think I might really be chaotic."

Betty thought that too. But he sounded so despondent that she just said "How about a test? If you're lawful, you'll stay lawful, even without the book."

Simon wrinkled his forehead. "But... isn't it all about going by the book?"

"Lawfulness is about order," said Betty. For someone so worldly and heroic, he didn't know much about alignment. Probably this would be good for him. "Where do you think the first lawful people came from? They didn't have books telling them how to act."

"I guess not," said Simon, still uncertain. "But Betty, I already memorised the book. I can't just... forget about it." He smiled weakly. "Hey, maybe I should become magic after all."

Betty smiled as well. "I can help with that. Just let me bind your memory of the book, and you can prove you're lawful!" She suspected that he'd actually realise that he wasn't lawful, and then he'd relax and stop pretending to be so serious. Either way, it would be good for him.

Simon looked at her strangely. "You can do that?"

"Yep," said Betty, surprised at his surprise. She guessed memory powers were less common than she'd thought. "I'll bind your memories temporarily. If something happens to me, they'll come back on their own. It's perfectly safe." Mostly safe.

Simon swallowed. "Okay. Just for this dungeon. Are you sure you-"

He didn't finish his sentence, because Betty had started singing, without diving under. It only worked above the water, where even her best singing voice sounded like a gurgle.

Simon's face relaxed, and he seemed to be looking at something a long way away. He stopped treading water, and began to sink. Betty grabbed him and held his head above the surface.

She'd never done this on a real human before. She never thought she'd have a reason to. Her father said it was their heritage, but Betty wasn't interested in luring sailors to their doom. There were much easier ways to drown people if she really wanted to, and people didn't often sail far enough from land to make it worthwile. It was too easy to get caught up in the current to the edge of the world.

She turned Simon's head so that she could sing in his ear, and transferred her consciousness to his memory core. She was used to memory cores that looked like kelp, and she didn't know why she was surprised that his was no different. She'd expected a flower, or... something that grew on land. The core was wilted, because her song had bound all his memories, but it would to go back to normal the second her physical self stopped singing. It only barely gave her enough time to duck underwater when she needed to breathe.

That was okay. This wouldn't take long.

Memories were rarely in a neat little package on their own, so she began to gather them together by holding the thought of Simon's book in her mind, as well the magazine he'd mentioned, just to be safe. It wasn't a perfect technique. Sometimes completely unrelated obsessions or frequently revisited memories tried to join in under flimsy pretexts, but she knew how to-

A memory whipped at her, so quickly that by the time she started to swim, it had already hit her. She found herself in some vehicle, with a young, tearful Simon. He was so far above the surface that there was no significant water anywhere, but since it was a dream, Betty could still swim and breath.

Simon hadn't seen her. He was too busy crying.

Betty tried not let his remembered distress distract her, and looked around the cluttered vehicle for the exit to the dream. Outside was an ancient city at dusk. She guessed it was really a modern city, unless Simon was a lot older than he let on her.

The sobbing stopped abruptly. Little Simon had seen her. "A... Are you the police?" he said, wiping his glasses on his shirt in a bad impression of nonchalance.

It was one of the doors. Left or right? The wrong one would lead further into the memory, and there wasn't time for that. She wasn't _trying_ to indiscriminately rifle through Simon's memories. "No, I'm your... friend." Left door. She opened it and swam through. "Uh, ta leme."

To her annoyance, the door didn't lead back to the memory core. It led to a dingy looking city that was more in line with what Betty expected of modern land architecture. A memory inside a memory. How much time did Simon spend in his own head?

She was floating near a tower, on top of a raised platform. The tower was protected by a force field. At first she thought there was nobody around, but then Simon swung on a rope out of a high window, with Gunter on his back and a chest under his arm. This time he looked to be in his early teens or late preteens.

"Penny! We got it!" Simon pushed off the tower and swung around the other side. Betty swam to the top of the tower and looked down. High ground was a good hiding spot from surface dwellers and their gravity problems.

Simon was giving the chest to an excited little girl dressed in rags.

"Finally!" said the girl, and drew a knife, which she used to pry open the chest.

Betty had a good view of the city, but she couldn't see the exit yet. It was probably close by.

"Hey," said Simon, and Betty looked back down. The chest was full of gold and jewels, and Simon seemed surprised about that. "Where... Where's your basket? I-it is in there? Right?"

"What do you think, stupid?" said Penny. "You're so gullible. I had you picked for a master thief as soon as I saw you."

The exit was the window Simon and Gunter had come out of. She swam down to it.

Simon spluttered for a second, then fell silent. Betty looked around to see him slide to the ground into the fetal position.

To her relief, this exit led back to the memory core. Simon had told her about that second memory, though she'd got the impression that he'd been a lot younger than he'd looked in the memory, and hadn't been an adventurer yet. What did any of this have to do with the book, anyway? Did it have a rule about not being manipulated by adorable urchins?

Betty was so distracted that she ran head first into another memory. This one was back in the ocean, with her memory self nearby, kissing Simon on the mouth. The sea surged violently, and Betty blushed. She remembered this fine. She did not need to see it a second time. Besides, if Simon noticed her, his mind might confuse her with the memory Betty. Escaping a mind that thought you were a figment of its own imagination was not easy.

She dove down, and out of the memory.

Betty was more careful now as she gathered the memories. Simon's thoughts were swift and persistent, and it was getting hard to carry the relevant memories one-handed. Her thought form didn't necessarily have to match her physical form, but she'd never been able to get the hang of changing it.

She was still pleased about burning her hand, but she thought about Simon obsessing over something that had made him cry when he was five, and felt lucky that she still had one.

Eventually, she had the memories balled between her hands, connected to the rest by a stalk. If she tugged hard enough, they'd come lose and eventually disintegrate in the mental ether, but she didn't want to take his memories away forever. He would never have agreed to that.

She concentrated on the stalk, and it grew stiff and metallic. Nothing was getting through there for hours, unless she let it.

She let her mind fade from the memory core, and could finally stop singing. She pushed Simon to the edge of the water, and rubbed her throat. She hadn't practiced since she'd left the Ocean Kingdom.

Simon focused on her slowly. "What? I... Sorry, Betty, I must have spaced out."

"It's okay," said Betty. He'd remember what had happened when the song finished wearing off. "Come on, let's keep going." She reformed her bubble, and they kept going through the doorway to the next room.

It was a completely bare, metal room with a few scraps of paint clinging to the walls. It was so empty it looked like it had been ransacked. A wind rippled the surface of the bubble, and Simon shivered.

Betty kept a lookout for anything locked. She needed to know if it had worked. They turned a corner, and Betty grabbed Simon's arm and pointed at the chest nestled in a rusted away segment of wall.

Simon nodded and started towards it. Then he stopped, looked distraught, and moved his mouth.

Betty poked her head out of the bubble.

"-geon crawl!" Simon was saying. "I don't know what to do!"

Puzzled, Betty said "What would you normally do?" Why was he so upset? He'd agreed to it. Hadn't he? Had she misunderstood?

Simon gestured at the chest. "I'd pick the lock, but... I can't remember if it's the right thing to do. A-I think there used to be rules."

Betty realised what had happened with a shock. In binding his memories of the book, she'd also bound his memories of agreeing to have his memories bound. "Just do what you want to do and let's keep going." Separating the memories out properly would take too long, and direct reminders could cause stress on the memory stem. She could damage his memory permanently if she wasn't careful.

Simon closed his eyes. "Okay."

He knelt down next to the chest and shone a light in the lock. He jiggled a couple of picks around inside, and had it open in seconds.

Betty couldn't tell if he was any happier. He still looked upset about the books. She hoped she'd made the right choice.

Inside the chest was an empty picture frame. Betty took it. "You sure this dungeon is rated for one, Simon?"

Simon frowned. "What?"

"Nothing," said Betty quickly.

The only other feature of the room was a small crack with water dribbling out of it. There were no other exits.

"A dead end," said Simon. "That's weird."

"Are you sure?" said Betty. She felt around the crack. The metal around it was slightly bowed out. "We explored everywhere else." Except...

Simon seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "The upper floor! Betty, is there a lot of water behind there?"

Betty nodded. "I think the wall can hold it, but..." She pulled out the container of explosive metal and grinned. She could just increase the water pressure in the next room and get the same effect, but she really wanted to blow something up.

Simon stood back and took his waterbreathing potion out of his bag.

Betty backed up and threw one of the bombs at the wall. For a second it just sat there, as the water dripped down to dissolve the coating.

Then it exploded, and the drips became a torrent. Betty managed to stop it from knocking Simon over, but even she couldn't soften the force very much.

The room was rapidly being drained of air. Simon managed to wedge himself against a corner so that he wouldn't move, and took more water-breathing potion. He didn't have time to measure it exactly, but it looked like five minute's worth. It was enough get to back downstairs if they didn't dawdle.

Betty pulled ahead as they swam back, glad to be out of the air. She looked back to make sure Simon was keeping up, and noticed he was frowning.

"What's wrong?" said Betty. That had been fun. She'd had fun. Blowing up walls and controlling water flows.

"I'm supposed to be helping you learn about dungeons, but I can't remember anything!" said Simon, pressing on his temples. "I'm sorry, I'm ruining your first dungeon crawl."

"What are you talking about?" said Betty. "That was the most fun I've had since we got here. Just relax!"

Simon didn't relax.

They swam down the stairwell, which was much easier than climbing up it, and went back to the first room, where the water had risen past the hole in the roof.

Simon surfaced halfway into the tiny upper room, and looked up. "Hey. There's another gap."

"Let's take a look!" said Betty. She waited for Simon to explain why they couldn't, but he didn't, so she gathered up a column of water, then let it fall as she took notice of their surroundings. "There's a sea serpent through there." She pointed at the small hole that had been bored into the wall. "Let's fight it!" She was back in the mood for battle.

Simon smiled naturally for the first time. "Let's."

.

As they reached the sixth floor, Simon looked up, expecting to see another gap in the ceiling, but it was whole. "I think this is the last floor." The room was even smaller than the one they'd come from. The only exit was over a pile of munitions, mostly bombs. They seemed empty, so Simon wasn't too worried.

Betty formed the water column that had brought them up into a ball of breathing water, which took up most of the room. "This is the boss floor, huh?"

"I don't think bosses work like that," said Simon. He was sure he usually knew how they did work, How could he have forgotten everything so completely? They hadn't died yet, but he was more concerned about their methods, which were probably heavily chaotic. Not knowing the right methods didn't make theirs any less wrong.

"But the boss is here," said Betty. "Right?" She rolled her water forward cautiously.

Simon shrugged helplessly. "Maybe."

Betty's understanding of her surroundings was severely reduced out of water, so neither of them knew if she was right. The room seemed clear, though. There was only a small footlocker, which Simon picked open.

"Just old money," said Betty, sounding disappointed. She pulled out the notes and put them away.

Pre-Mushroom War artifacts were strangely rare in this dungeon. Maybe it was a common feature of dungeons to contain modern loot regardless of age. Simon thought he'd known the reason before, but the knowledge had vanished with all his other expertise.

Betty rolled over to the pile of bombs with her hand on her chin. She pushed them, but they seemed rusted together. She concentrated, and rolled her water up the block, almost vertically. When she reached the top, she waved at Simon, then suddenly disappeared down the other side.

"Betty!" Simon ran to see what had happened.

He pulled himself up the pile, and before he knew what was happening, he slid down a steep river of water on the other side, into blackness.

A coil of water pulled him faster down the slope by his ankle. Simon struggled until Betty came into view, laughing and throwing her hands into the air.

There didn't seem to be any danger yet. Simon relaxed and laughed as they spiralled downwards.

There was a flash, the slide stopped abruptly. They fell into a partially flooded room, still laughing.

A piece of laminated paper floated down from the slide. Simon grabbed it out of the air. "Huh. A photo."

It was a picture of them on the slide, holding on to each other and happy-screaming. Probably an automated system, he hoped.

"Let me see!" said Betty, snatching it off him. She examined it, smiled, and said "That's going in the picture frame."

Simon tried to figure out where they'd come out. It wasn't anywhere he recognised from the rest of the dungeon, though they hadn't visited every room. He didn't know how far they'd slid, but he guessed they were in some sort of basement. It was large, with a high ceiling, like a hanger. But he couldn't see a vehicle anywhere. It was just a huge, empty room.

He noticed something out of the corner of his eye, right below them. Simon grabbed Betty's arm. "Betty."

Betty looked down, just as the shape rushed up at them. They swam in opposite directions, and a huge, lopsided dolphin or whale erupted out of the water, then dove back under, chittering angrily.

"Takes one to know one," Betty shot back. She made a circular motion with her good hand, starting a small whirlpool.

"You speak dolphin?" said Simon, watching the dolphin carefully. It didn't seem too inconvenienced. In fact, the whirlpool was dissipating.

"You don't?" said Betty, making faster motions.

The dolphin swam against the current, and the whirlpool died down.

"Ugh, she's nullifying my attacks," said Betty. She threw her arms back and created a big wave, which, under the dolphin's forward motion, turned into a gentle rise.

The dolphin rushed them again, generating a current so strong that Simon almost didn't get out of the way in time.

"Betty!" he said. "Get me as close as you can!"

Betty used the water to push him towards the dolphin, which was now circling the walls. The current slackened off as he got close, but Simon's swimming had improved so much lately that he barely lost any speed.

He hit the dolphin's back hard and held on, twirling his nunchucks and hitting it in the back of his head. The dolphin twisted around and tried to tear him off its back with the water, but he barely felt the tugs. It seemed to have a lot of control over water, at least at close range, but it could not beat Betty's currents.

After several blows, the dolphin let out a tiger-like roar, and finally managed to throw him off.

The water began to drain from the room, apparently to nowhere.

"What's going on?" said Betty. She formed her bubble back as the water went below head height.

"I think it's phase two," said Simon. He assumed it was the dolphin letting the water out, because he couldn't see anything else that could be doing it. And why would it get rid of the water if it wasn't at least as competent out of the water than in? Maybe it didn't know that Simon was as much a land dweller as Betty was a water dweller. It wasn't going to get an edge this way.

When the room drained completely, the dolphin chittered and bounced around at them. Simon had no trouble dodging, but he was a bit worried about Betty. She wasn't quite as agile when she had to roll a big sloshy ball around.

The dolphin stopped in the centre of the room, and pulled its head back. Nothing seemed to happen, except Betty grit her teeth.

Simon poked her head into her bubble to see what was going on.

"She's trying to take my water!" said Betty. "Go distract her or something!"

"Right!" said Simon. Maybe if he hadn't lost his memories, he would have guessed that and not wasted the time.

The dolphin kept pulling on the water, but it turned its head to watch Simon as he tried to sneak behind it. Realising that he couldn't get out of its sight, Simon abandoned stealth and jumped at its back. It slapped him in the face with its tail, knocking him to the floor. He managed to twist his feet under him and land in a crouching position, but the dolphin hadn't relaxed its guard at all.

"Hm... That's not gonna work this time."

Simon looked back at Betty. She was barely holding on. He thought he could see a fine mist streaming from the bubble to the dolphin.

He went right up to the dolphin and smacked it in the face. It bit him in the arm, held on for just long enough to show that Simon couldn't break its grip, and let go.

Simon stepped away and rubbed his arm. The wound wasn't deep, but it did hurt. He was still dripping with saltwater, which didn't help.

So. He couldn't stay on its back, he couldn't attack it from the front, he couldn't attack it from the back, and it was flexible enough to hit him with either end if he attacked it from the side. If he did nothing, Betty would lose her grip on her water. It didn't seem to be getting tired, unlike her.

What did he do now? Simon pressed his temples, trying to think. He had no idea. The monster was going to take all Betty's water and he had no idea. The dolphin was... invincible.

How did you kill an invincible boss monster? Dungeons were always solveable, he still remembered that. "Think," he mumbled, pressing his head harder.

Stealth was not going to work. There was nowhere to hide, and no way to get the dolphin's attention away from him. He assumed that Betty was already trying her best to keep her water, and even as he watched, a glob of water detached from the bubble, and splattered into the dolphin's head.

Betty looked around at him, poked her head out, and yelled something that was mostly unintelligible, but Simon could lipread well enough to see his name. She was wondering what he was doing just standing there.

What a time to get strangely specific amnesia. His girlfriend was going to suffocate, all because he couldn't protect her the one time she needed protection. She was so smart and capable and good at everything, until you took her out of the water.

No. She was less capable out of water, but she was exactly as smart. Simon approached the slowly shrinking bubble and waved Betty out.

"Uh..." he said. "Any ideas, Bets?"

"What?" said Betty. She sounded strained.

"I-I-I don't know how to stop it." Simon did his best to sound calm. He wondered if he should have lied and told her that it was a test, and she had to come up with a plan for him.

It would have a been a sadistic and pointless test. She was under enough pressure trying to keep her water, and she needed to know her own strengths and weaknesses, not Simon's. At least not in much detail.

Betty didn't reply. She just swallowed, and Simon could tell she was disappointed in him.

Simon focused as hard as he could on his vague, fleeting memory of rules for dungeons, and pain shot through his head, nearly sending him to his knees.

Betty looked from left to right. The bubble seemed to be shrinking faster. Was she giving up, or was the bubble's surface area just smaller?

Betty beckoned Simon into the bubble, and Simon took a breath and went in. She normally pulled him in without even asking. It could have just been because she usually wasn't locked in a watery tug-of-war with a monstrous cetacean, but he couldn't help thinking that it was because of him.

"Simon, you can't remember because... I made you forget," Betty said. "You agreed to it," she added, before he could say anything.

"I... what?" said Simon. What she said made so little sense it sounded like a lie. It made his head hurt so much that he couldn't even muster the strength to be angry.

Betty grabbed his arm. "Don't think about it. Just let me restore your memory." She opened her mouth.

Some time later, Simon shook his head. For a second, he thought he'd been daydreaming, until his wet clothes reminded him where he was. He remembered now. He had agreed. And he'd proved that he was... chaotic.

This was very bad, but he couldn't afford to worry about his alignment now. He stepped back, massaged his temples, and mumbled "Boss battles..." Suddenly he knew a lot of rules for battling bosses. He knew not to let his guard down until he was sure the boss was defeated. He knew that if the boss didn't react to an attack, it probably wasn't doing any damage. And he knew that... "When the boss seems unassailable, look at the environment!"

He looked at the environment. It was a big room, made out of brick. There was a door at one end. Part of the right wall was cracked.

"Cracked..." he said. Cracked walls could be bombed. That was one of the axioms of dungeons. "Betty!" He mimed an explosion at her.

She didn't seem to understand. "She's weak to yoga? Isn't everyone?" She poked her head out.

"No, the bombs!" said Simon, pointing at the wall. "That wall has a crack in it!" He wondered how much effect the bombs might have on the dolphin, and whether he would have thought of that if he'd remembered that they were necessary for this dungeon.

"Okay..." said Betty reluctantly. She gave Simon the container of metal.

Simon took out a good sized piece gingerly and hurled it at the wall. The coating around it cracked, but the metal just sat there, getting slowly duller.

Simon gestured at Betty. She realised what he meant and shot a quick blast of water at it from the now quickly shrinking bubble. She had to curl up tightly to stay inside. They were out of time.

The bomb exploded, leaving behind a substantial hole in the wall. Behind it was an alcove with a deep, smooth hole in it. Above the hole was a button, and a faded sign reading " M EN Y DE N E".

Simon hesitated, then pressed the button.

There was a slow whine. Something was warming up. Simon peered down the hole, then realised that he was looking down the barrel of some sort of weapon.

He threw himself out of the way just in time. "Holy moly!"

Something rocketed past him and exploded on the opposite wall.

Simon stared at the black mark it had left. That would probably help, but there didn't seem to be any way to aim it. He went back to Betty's bubble, which was now small that she was almost doubled over, with her back exposed to the air, and whispered "Can you make the dolphin move in front of the rocket?"

Betty grinned weakly and nodded. She took a breath, and yelled something with a lot of clicks and chitters.

The dolphin replied with its eyes narrowed.

Betty said something else, and indicated herself with a "come and get me" gesture.

The dolphin charged. Betty quickly moved her breathing water under her and used it to propel herself away.

Simon retreated to the alcove and tried to calculate the right time to press the button. Betty was leading the dolphin around in a circle that went directly in front of the weapon. If he did it right, they had a chance. If he did it wrong, he could hit Betty instead.

Betty glanced at him as she went around.

Simon counted in his head. If the dolphin's speed remained current, and he remembered how long it took for the M EN Y DE N E to warm up, then he should press the button... now.

He flattened himself against the wall next to it, and the weapon warmed up and shot a rocket that caught the dolphin right on the midsection.

When the smoke cleared, the dolphin was on its back. Simon ran to check on it, with one hand on his nunchuks, but it wasn't necessary. They'd won.

Betty took a deep breath of her small amount of remaining water, and headed for the door, picking up water from the floor as she did.

.

Later, they sat on a buried golf cart in the underwater city, sorting out the loot in silence. Simon let Betty keep most of it. It was her first dungeon, and he had plenty of loot at home.

Betty seemed happy. She was humming to herself as she let the coins fall through her fingers and made a whirlpool from all the keys they'd collected.

Simon wished he was happy. He sighed, and looked up at the surface, where an iceberg was passing. There was nothing like being underwater in winter to truly appreciate how much of an iceberg stayed under the surface. "Maybe I really am chaotic."

Maybe he'd been deluding himself all these years. Why was doing things the wrong way so fun?

"You could still be lawful," Betty suggested. "The book just... didn't tell you the right rules."

"Yeah," said Simon. "Maybe." It was tempting to think that the book was the one that was wrong.

They watched the iceberg pass overhead, almost like a cloud, until Simon took a breath and coughed it back up. "Breadballs!" he glubbed, swimming upwards. The waterbreathing potion had worn off.

The surface was further up than it looked, and he was already tiring. He didn't think he hold his breath that much longer. "Breadballs," he said again, wasting precious air.

Betty grabbed him and propelled him upwards. He broke the surface and gasped for air. It was so cold it felt like tiny icicles were stabbing his throat, but it was air.

"Simon?" Gunter was sitting on the iceberg, frying up a fish.

Simon clambered onto the iceberg and tried to warm himself on Gunter's portable stove. "I r-ran out of air," he said, when he could speak again.

Gunter prodded the fish with a spatula. "Are... are you okay?"

Betty dunked the iceberg underwater just as Simon was starting to get slightly warm, and said "All our dates end this way."


End file.
